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Library of Che Theological Seminary 


PRINCETON - NEW JERSEY 


<P: 
PRESENTED BY 


John Stuart Conning, D.D. 
CB 195 .K3 1926 
Kautsky, Karl, 1854-1938. 
Are the Jews a race? 








Digitized by the Internet Archive 
In 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/arejewsraceOOkaut_0O 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 





Are the Jews a Race? 


by Karl Kautsky~Translated 
from the 2nd German edition 


INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS 
NEW YORK 





CopyricHut, 1926, By 
INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CO., Inc. 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


PUBLISHER’S NOTE 


Are the Jews a Race now appears for the first time in 
English. The first German edition appeared in 1914, under 
the title Rasse und Judentum; the second edition, in 1921, 
already included a number of important additions and im- 
provements, particularly the new chapter entitled “*Zionism 
After the War”; for the present English version, the author 
has revised and brought up to date the second German 
edition, in the light of recent developments in Palestine. 


CoryricutT, 1926, By 
INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHERS CO., Inc. 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


PUBLISHER'S NOTE 


Are the Jews a Race now appears for the first time in 
English. The first German edition appeared in 1914, under 
the title Rasse und Judentum; the second edition, in 1921, 
already included a number of important additions and im- 
provements, particularly the new chapter entitled “Zionism 
After the War”; for the present English version, the author 
has revised and brought up to date the second German 
edition, in the light of recent developments in Palestine. 








a" 


y ha 4 ny 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


I. Race THEORIES 


II. Racers or ANIMALS . 


a. Domestic Animals 


b. Wild Animals 
III. Tuer Races or Man 


IV. DirreErENcES AND OpposiITions BETWEEN THE 
Races or Man . 


V. Puysitcat CHARACTERISTICS OF THE JEWISH 
Racer 


VI. Menrat QUALITIES OF THE JEWISH Racer 
VII. Tue AssmmMILaTION OF THE JEWS 
VIII. Anti-Semitism 
IX. Zionism Brerore THE War 
X. ZiontsM AFTER THE Wark. 
XI. Pure Races anp Mixep Races 
XII. Tue Last Staces or JupDAIsM . 


INDEX 


PAGE 


11 
20 


44, 


64 


89 
125 
144 
157 
180 
193 
216 
240 
249 





ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 





ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


CHAPTER I 


RACE THEORIES 


“On the Jew’s faith I do not look, his race is what I 
cannot brook’,* is the motto of modern anti-Semitism, 
which—contrary to the naive anti-Semitism of earlier 
periods—is proud of its scientific spirit and feels itself 
free from religious prejudices. Just as religion was once 
obliged, and is still obliged, to cloak or justify all possible 
varieties of secular partisan interests, so natural science 
must now aid in representing aspirations of interests with 
strictly temporal and spacial limitations as natural and 
eternal necessities. 

This does not mean that religion formerly—and the nat- 
ural sciences now—were actually created for such purposes 
by interested parties, as is sometimes maintained with re- 
gard to religion. Both grow from entirely different roots. 
But as soon as either has become a force dominating the 
thought of men, each social stratum finds itself impelled 
to make use of this force and to justify its interests on 


1 Was der Jude glaubt, ist einerlei, 
In der Rasse liegt die Schweinerei. 


11 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


the basis of this force. When, at the end of the Eleventh 
Century, the nations of western and central Europe had 
been relieved of the pressure of the Slavs and Arabs to 
such an extent as to enable them to take the offensive and 
plunder the wealthy Orient, they inaugurated their preda- 
tory campaigns—the Crusades—with the battle-cry: Dieu 
le veult! And when, a few centuries later, after the Turks 
had again pushed back the Christians in the Mediterranean, 
and the rising capitalism of western Europe was crying for 
colonial booty and finding ready tools for its adventurous 
expeditions to new continents in the declining knighthood 
and the expropriated peasants, these continents were 
visited with fire and sword, plunder and serfdom, in order 
to bring the light of true religion to the heathen for the 
greater glory of God. And the class struggles in Europe 
itself, which were then disintegrating feudalism and usher- 
ing in capitalism, were conducted as late as in the Seven- 
teenth Century by the various parties with constant in- 
vocations of the Bible and the Fathers of the Church. 
Since then religion has lost its power. As industrial 
capitalism advances, the religious mode of thought is re- 
placed by the scientific mode of thought. Religion still 
maintains itself for a period, by force of habit, as a con- 
servative power, but the motive springs of the ensuing 
social evolution cease to make use of religious modes of 
thought and arguments. ‘The advances of the new, 
capitalist mode of production are closely connected with the 
advances in the natural sciences. Each serves as a pow- 


12 


RACE THEORIES 


erful stimulus to the other. The bourgeois intelligentsia 
now demand that all social aspirations be in accord with 
natural science, i.¢., with the recognized laws of nature; 
each social interest must find its justification in its com- 
patibility with the laws of nature. In this connection, 
however, human society sometimes still fails to be regarded 
as a specific portion of nature, having its own laws, just 
as organic nature has its own laws as distinguished from 
those of inorganic nature. The inadequacy of this point of 
view easily becomes apparent, producing a reaction in 
favour of isolating human society, or man himself, as a 
social, ethical creature, from the natural laws of causality. 

The bourgeois philosophy of our times moves between 
these two extremes. 

Once Darwinism had completed its victorious procession 
through the natural sciences, it was regarded as up-to-date 
to apply it without further ado to social conditions also, 
There are no sudden leaps in nature, but only imperceptible 
transformations, therefore natural science forbids revolu- 
tion as a violation of natural laws. The struggle for ex- 
istence is represented as an eternal process, wherefor it is 
contrary to nature to construct a society without com- 
petition, etc. / 

In the last few decades it is particularly the conception 
of race that enjoys precedence as an explanation, or rather 
justification, of social institutions and aspirations. 

A colonial policy is represented by the theoreticians of 
race as a natural necessity, as a consequence of the fact 


13 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


that nature creates master races and slave races. Only 
the former have creative ability; the others are devoid of 
independence, cannot exist without foreign guidance, can- 
not evolve to a higher stage, but are doomed to serve the 
master races. 

But the law of natural necessity with which these race 
theoreticians operate also affords additional pleasant in- 
ferences for certain bourgeois cliques of our time. Even 
within the master races there are differences of race, the 
blond race being the most magnificent of all. These blond 
(Nordic) gentlemen proclaim themselves to be the cleverest, 
noblest and mightiest of men, whom all others must serve. 
International politics must be based on this conception, 
from which also results the necessity for the existence of 
exploiters and exploited. 

Viewed from this standpoint, the French Revolution as- 
sumes a very peculiar function. Mr. Bornhak, Professor 
of Public Law at the University of Berlin, begins with the 
fact that the area of present-day France, formerly in- 
habited by Celts, and later conquered by the Romans, 
finally succumbed during the migration of nations to 
Teutonic tribes, who there created a new government au- 
thority, controlled by them with the aid of the Catholic 
Church. This state appears to Bornhak as the exclusive 
achievement of the Teutonic barbarians: “The Celts are 
politically one of the most incapable races that have ever 
existed.” The Teutons, on the other hand, are “a truly 
state-organising race of creative endowment”. It is they 


14 


RACE THEORIES 


who made France a power, until their Celtic subjects ex- 
terminated the master race in the great revolution, “with 
barbarous cruelty”. 

“The Romanised Celtic race becomes the entire popula- 
tion. But this result simultaneously, owing to the political 
incapacity of the Celtic race, sealed the fate of the French 
nation.” * 

The same conception of the French Revolution as a 
rebellion of inferior Celts against the noble blond race had 
previously been advocated by Driesmans, who maintained 
that this revolution had been “made by lawyers and jour- 
nalists”, professions of ‘unquestioned Celtic origin”.* That 
is the way our race theoreticians understand the writing 
of history. 

Their political economy is not any sounder. The 
_ anthropologist Ammon in 1893 published a work on nat- 
ural selection among humans (Die natiirliche Auslese bewmn 
Menschen), in which he finds, on the basis of material col- 
lected in Baden, that the class distinction between cap- 
italists and proletarians is based on the existence of two 
races within the population, a blond, dolichocephalic, 
Teutonic race, and a black, brachycephalic, “Mongolian” 
race. The latter are declared deficient in independence and 
mental endowment, differing in these respects from the 
Teutons: “Like all Aryans, the Teutons are born to rule 


2C. Bornhak: Der Einfluss der Rasse auf die Staatsbildung, 
“Archiv fiir Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie”’, March, 1904, pp. 254 
et seq. 

8 Quoted by Hertz: Moderne Rassentheorien, p. 10. 


15, 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


other peoples. Wherever they appear, they are the ruling 
and socially preferred classes, they are a people of fierce 
courage and indomitable energy, of devotion and fidelity, 
of pride and truthfulness, a shining race of demigods, the 
like of whom the world has seen but once before, in the 
Greeks, and will probably never see again.” 

Ammon investigates the story of the evolution of these 
demigods on the basis of material collected in the little 
province of Baden, where they live in the country as peas- 
ants together with the Mongolian roundheads, and emi- 
grate to the cities like the latter. In the cities, owing to 
their demigod nature, they soon rise to splendid eminence, 
being transfigured into city employees, brewers, grain 
dealers, and other god-like forms, while the black-haired 
Asiatics from the Schwarzwald are relegated to the well 
deserved, contemptible servitude of wage-labour. 

About the same time, even antedating Ammon, other 
theoreticians of race came forward with the statement that 
it was not the blond Teutons but the black-haired Asiatics 
who were more and more gaining control of capital in the 
cities, subjugating the Teutons and gradually displacing 
them even as intellectuals, physicians, lawyers, journalists. 
But the victors in this case were not lauded as demigods, 
but denounced as a dangerous riff-raff, who must be driven 
out or at least disfranchised, in the interest of the lordly 
Teutons. This race of swarthy undesirables is that of the 
Jews. 'The race argument is used more in support of anti- 
Semitism than in any other social movement of our times, 


16 


RACE THEORIES 


having now completely displaced the religious argument in 
western Europe. 

The anti-Semitism inherited from the Feudal Era had 
long seemed to be about to disappear, having dwindled to 
the same extent, and under the influence of the same 
capitalist evolution, as the power of religion, and being re- 
garded as one of the prejudices of backward persons. 

But about a generation ago it began to come up again, 
becoming modernised, and while it may not be a political 
factor in modern countries, it is nevertheless everywhere 
a social factor. We shall learn subsequently the causes of 
this condition, as well as why we shall not be able to dis- 
pose of this anti-Semitism so quickly, but also—of course 
—why anti-Semitism cannot count on a victory. 

Let us first consider only the racial argument of anti- 
Semitism, an argument which is not used by anti-Semitism 
alone, but also by other domestic and international move- 
ments. 

Characteristically enough, there is rising within Judaism, 
as a reaction against anti-Semitism, a similar tendency to 
accept and utilize the theory of race. It is a natural ap- 
plication of the principle: If this theory permits Christian- 
Teutonic patriots to declare themselves demigods, why 
should Zionist patriots not use it in order to stamp the 
_ people chosen by God as a chosen race of nature, a noble 
race that must be carefully guarded from any deterioration 
and contamination by foreign elements? A considerable 
literature has been produced within the past decade dealing 


17 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


with questions of this order. Already in 1904, these 
arguments were well summarised and evaluated in Friedrich 
Hertz’s book on modern theories of race,* of which a second 
revised and much enlarged edition was printed under 
another title in 1915.5 Among the latest books on this 
subject, one of the best is that of Dr. Maurice Fishberg: 
The Jews: A Study of Race and Environment, London and 
New York, 1911, 578 pp.° 

Fishberg uses not only material collected by other an- 
thropologists, but also much new data obtained by him 
by measuring more than four thousand Jews from four 
continents, and digesting this material in a most conscien- 
tious and scholarly manner. It was to the many sug- 
gestions given me by this book that I owe the idea of 
writing the present little work. 

In this connection, I might mention that I am again 
placed in the same embarrassing position that was mine 
when I wrote my book Increase and Evolution in Nature 
and Society, and to which I referred on pages vu and 17 
of that work: ‘ namely, I am obliged, although I am a lay- 
man in this field, to discuss questions connected with the 

4Hertz: Moderne Rassentheorien, Vienna, 1904. 

5 Rasse und Kultur, Leipzig. 

6 Kautsky uses the German translation of L. Hepner: Die Rassen- 
merkmale der Juden, Hine Einfiihrung in thre Anthropologie, 
Miinchen, 1913, 300 pp. Our references are to the pages of the 
English edition, except where the German translation, which involved 
some changes, is specifically mentioned.—TransLaTor. 


*Vermehrung und Entwicklung in Natur und Gesellschaft, Stutt- 
gart, 1908, 


18 


RACE THEORIES 


natural science of biology. Here also there is a border 
region, one of the many points at which biology and sociol- 
ogy meet, and which, strictly speaking, would require the 
writer to be a master in both fields. But the present state 
of knowledge makes this impossible for any living man. 
No one who enters such a field—and they are much entered 
—can be required to have a mastery of more than one of 
the sciences in question, together with so much knowledge 
of the other as to know the general state of the science. 
His own science must always be such a man’s point of 
departure; it is his task to show the agreement between 
the conclusions of his own science and those of the border 
science, which is by no means a simple matter—let us say— 
for a sociologist, who finds the specialists in natural science 
in such great disagreement in questions of race, as, for 
instance, on the fundamental problem of heredity. The 
sociologist may, therefore, consider himself justified in 
making his selection among the conflicting theories of the 
natural scientist, though he be a layman, and to favour such 
theory as may be compatible with the firm basis he has 
gained in sociology. | 


19 


CHAPTER II 
RACES OF ANIMALS 


a. Domestic Animals 


One of the most remarkable peculiarities of our theo- 
reticians of race, who call themselves “anthropo-sociol- 
ogists’’, is the fact that they leave us all the more in the 
dark as to the true nature of the concept of race, the more 
they have occasion to manipulate with this concept in the 
explanation of social phenomena. A man’s being, action, 
performance, are due in their opinion simply to his race; 
they have been inherited from his ancestors and are trans- 
mitted with the certainty of natural law to his descendants. 
Race is the modern Fate, as inscrutable and immutable as 
the latter. | 

It seems self-evident to the anthropo-sociological theo- 
reticians of race that those groups designated as human 
races should be understood in the same way as we under- 
stand races of animals. They seem to be not troubled for 
a moment by any question as to whether the hfe conditions 
of man do not alter the concept of race as applied to man. 
They do not even take up the question of which type of 
animal race is represented by the human races, 

As a matter of fact, the races of animals are not all of 
the same type, but may be divided into two different 


20 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


groups: the races of domestic animals, and the races of 
anmals in the wild state. 

Zoologists and botanists distinguish these groups with 
great care. As arule, they apply the word “race” only to 
the former, while the latter are termed “varieties” or 
‘“‘species”. The theoreticians of race, the anthropo- 
sociologists, however, indiscriminately apply observations 
and laws valid for both the races of domestic animals as 
well as for the varieties of wild animals, to the human races. 
This alone must give rise to dreadful confusion, altogether 
aside from the fact that human beings are neither domestic 
animals nor animals in the wild condition, but a tribe living 
under quite peculiar conditions, conditions which do not 
resemble those of any other animals. 

Before taking up the problem of race, we must therefore 
first attain clarity as to the distinction between the “race” 
of the domestic animal and the “variety” of the wild animal. 
We speak here only of animals, since only they are of im- 
portance to our problem, which concerns the human races, 
but the following remarks apply just as well to plants as to 
animals. 

A phenomenon is best understood when its origin is 
known. In the case of the races of domestic animals, it is 
not difficult to ascertain this origin, for the process is 
being accomplished daily before our eyes. The breeding of 
new races is constantly going on. On the other hand, the 
formation of varieties in nature cannot be observed; it 
must be inferred as an hypothesis. 


21 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


If we regard the organisms in nature, we shall find that 
none of them serves a purpose lying outside of itself, but 
that each is an end in itself. Its individual organs must 
serve for the preservation of the whole, and must therefore 
be adequate for—or at least compatible with—self- 
preservation. An organism constituted otherwise cannot 
continue to exist, and certainly not to multiply. 

But in the case of the animal organism, not only its own 
organs are important, but also those of other organisms 
with which it comes in contact, which oppose it, or on which 
it lives. Only man, however, has advanced to the point of 
altering in such manner the organs of the organisms from 
which or by which he lives, as to make them more sub- 
servient to his purposes. This is one of the means by which 
he has advanced beyond his primitive condition. 

His first step in this process is to cause animals (also 
plants) which he would otherwise be obliged to seek out 
and capture with more or less difficulty, to live and multiply 
in his proximity. His first object in this is probably merely 
to diminish the difficulties of seeking, perhaps also of over- 
coming, the organisms on which he lives. But once the 
latter have been accustomed to live together with man as 
tame companions, man is also impelled to attempt to adapt 
the organs of the domestic animal, or of the cultivated 
plant, to his own purposes, for which nature did not intend 
them. 

This is best attained by adequately altering their con- 
ditions of life, by increasing their supply of food, perhaps 


22 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


by fertilizing or battening, decreasing their expenditure of 
strength in the life process, for instance, by sparing them 
the necessity of looking for fodder, of fleeing from enemies, 
of losing heat in the winter cold, etc. But, ultimately, 
man comes to the point of altering these organisms by 
making use of his observation that each individual has the 
tendency to transmit his qualities to his posterity. Much 
as all the individuals of the same species may resemble each 
other, they are never completely identical. Slight varia- 
tions are always present, and these may easily be trans- 
mitted. 

Most domestic animals finally become so amenable to 
man’s guidance that he is enabled to mate them, or pre- 
vent them from reproducing, as he likes. Once he has 
advanced to this point, he will, of course, prefer to permit 
those specimens to reproduce that are most suitable for his 
purposes, that furnish most milk, meat, or fat, or yield 
the finest wool, or lay most eggs, have most traction power 
or swiftness, etc. If those of their posterity continue to 
reproduce, who present these qualities in the most emphatic 
form, these qualities will gradually be reinforced to such an 
extent, and the bodies of the animals will alter so greatly, 
as to be perceptibly different from those of their ancestors, 
thus producing a new species from the old species, with 
permanent, repeatedly transmittable characteristics, pro- 
vided the breeding-animals are always mated only with 
their like. 

This selection is at first predominantly an unconscious 


23 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


one. The best specimens are reproduced because they are 
most prized. Without any intention of securing a new 
race, this final outcome of the process has not been ap- 
parent from the outset. But the art of breeding is per- 
fected more and more, becomes more and more conscious, 
and finally actually sets out to create specific races with 
specific race traits. At times, new variations may sporad- 
ically appear in isolated specimens. If these are of advan- 
tage to man, he will attempt to reproduce them. Thus, in 
1791, a ram with short, crooked legs and a long back, 
which was thus prevented from jumping over hedges, gave 
rise to a new race in America, that of the Ancona sheep. 
Likewise in France in 1828, a hornless ram with uncom- 
monly soft, long wool, led to the creation of a new race, 
the Mauchamp sheep. As a rule, however, the creation of 
a new race is not such a simple matter, but proceeds by 
means of a slow, gradual reinforcement of traits, often 
discernible in the first generation only to the trained eye 
of experienced breeders, and not attaining practical sig- 
nificance until they have been reinforced to a sufficient 
extent in the course of generations. 

The uninterrupted selection of breeding-animals, con- 
tinued for generations according to the same plan, creates 
a new race which is maintained by the fact that only such 
specimens are reproduced as present this race trait in the 
most emphatic form, that a mating with individuals of 
other races is strictly avoided, and all specimens of the 
specific race which present a variation that deviates from 


24 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


the desired race trait are of course excluded from further 
breeding. 

The necessary condition for the formation of such new 
races is, of course, that the animals reproduce in the tame 
state and that their mating be under man’s control. The 
elephant, as a rule, reproduces only in the wild state and 
has created no new races. 

On the other hand, the domestic cat leaves nothing to be 
desired in the way of prolificness, yet the cat has preserved 
much of its original freedom in spite of man. Its love-life 
is carried on not in the stable but on the roofs, and there- 
fore, according to Darwin, it does not furnish any different 
races within the same country.’ 

However, the formation of new races under otherwise 
identical circumstances will be the easier, the greater the 
certainty to mate specific individuals, and the more swiftly 
the generations succeed each other. This is the reason for 
the great increase of races of rabbits and pigeons; here the 
breeding of such races has become a sport. 


b. Wild Animals 


Let us now examine the case of the formation of varieties 
of animals in the wild condition, which should—it would 
appear—have been examined before we took up the races 
of domestic animals, for the wild varieties, of course, arose 


i1Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under 
Domestication, London, 1876, vol. i, pp. 45, 46; vol. ii, pp. 220, 222. 


25 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


earlier and constitute the fundamental trunk from which 
the races of domestic animals have branched off. But ina 
study of the history of the theory of the evolution of races, 
the origin of the organisms controlled by man is the proper 
point of departure, for it was the observations made in 
artificial selection that led Darwin to construct his hypoth- 
esis of natural selection. 

Darwin assumed that the formation of varieties and 
species proceeds in the natural condition, as in the case 
of domestic animals and cultivated plants, by a selection of 
the best, most adapted, specimens for reproduction, and 
excluding from reproduction those less fitted, with the sole 
difference that the selection, in the natural condition, is 
not conducted by man, in accordance with his purposes, but 
by the struggle for existence, which is a consequence of 
overpopulation, of the circumstance that more individuals 
of each species are produced than can continue to exist. 
A constant merciless struggle is going on among them, in 
which the weakest, least fit, succumb, while the strongest, 
most fit, maintain themselves and reproduce. Serious ob- 
jections were raised to this view at the very outset. If 
the struggle for existence is a continuous, progressive 
selection of the best specimens, the transformation of 
species must be going on continuously, and at a rather 
rapid rate. In the case of certain domestic animals and 
garden plants a specific new race may be produced in the 
course of a few years. 

In nature, on the other hand, observation shows us that 


26 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


species remain apparently unchanged for long periods. 
They may change in geological periods, but remain un- 
changed for many thousands of years within a geological 
period. In historical times, the great mass of wild animal 
species has remained entirely the same. As depicted on 
the ancient Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, they look 
exactly like their prototypes of today. We are told this 
difficulty may be eliminated by assuming that evolution pro- 
ceeds with tremendous slowness, by a gradual accumula- 
tion of imperceptible alterations. But the slower this 
evolution, the more imperceptible the alterations contrib- 
uted to progress by each generation, the more insurmount- 
able becomes another difficulty in the theory of selection: 
it becomes more and more impossible to assume that each 
alteration bestows upon the individual producing it a 
preponderance over other individuals not supplied with it. 
In artificial selection, the selection is made by men who 
already have in mind the new type that is to be bred, 
grasping its practical advantages and appreciating— 
through eyes that have been sharpened by this prophecy— 
the significance of hardly perceptible alterations, which are 
important not in themselves, but merely as points of de- 
parture in a long chain of development, the new type being 
realised only at its termination. The theory of evolution 
attempts to dispense altogether with providence in the 
formation of natural species. Without the aid of far- 
sighted selection, however, imperceptible alterations cannot 
become the cause for the survival and reproduction of the 


27 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


individuals supplied with them. Reference to artificial 
selection is here of no value at all. 

In addition, we have a third difficulty: Darwin called 
his theory of natural selection an explanation of the origin 
of species. If correct, this theory would merely afford an 
explanation of the evolution of more highly organised im- 
dividuals from those less highly organised. Its whole 
emphasis is laid on the solution of the problem of evolution. 
But, in order to explain the origin of species, we must also 
explain the similarity between individuals, which leads to 
generalising them as a specific species. Whence this sim- 
larity? 

In the case of artificial selection, the cause of the sim- 
ilarity between individuals is in their common descent from 
the same ancestors. The ancestral tree is here of great 
importance. But it is impossible, in this case, to maintain 
a “pure race” without constant intervention on the part of 
the breeder, who must carefully guard his race animals 
against mating with others, and who must eliminate from 
their posterity all those individuals that present alterations 
deviating from the pure racial type. 

In nature this breeder is lacking. Unless the alterations 
are of such variety as to doom the individual to early de- 
struction, they will not prevent it from mating with other 
differently constituted individuals, and thus from repro- 
ducing. A constant mingling of individuals with the most 
_ varied changes will take place. 

A breeder producing a new race, furthermore, is con- 


28 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


cerned only with a specific one-sided peculiarity, which he 
aims to perpetuate. His selection is made solely with this 
object in view. But in nature, it is not merely a single 
quality which affords advantage to the individuals pos- 
sessing it; the most varied qualities may be of value. Let 
us assume the theory of selection to be correct to the extent 
that evolution takes place by reason of the fact that in- 
dividuals with advantageous alterations maintain and re- 
produce themselves more easily than others. Even here, 
the most varied alterations are possible, as we may see 
from the case of the hare. Some hares will be benefited 
by longer legs, others by greater endurance, a third variety 
by better protective mimicry (perhaps they are white in 
winter and brown in summer), a fourth group by reason of 
enhanced productiveness, others again through increased 
power of resistance to climatic influences (perhaps they 
have a thick pelt in winter, a light one in summer) ; finer 
differences in the sense organs, sharper eyes, better hearing, 
finer sense of smell, as well as differences in intelligence, in 
swiftness and correctness of the judgments based on sen- 
sual impressions, will be of advantage. One individual may 
present one set of advantages, another may have other 
advantages. 

If only such individuals should continue to mate as have 
coincident traits, they might emphasise these traits and 
thus create a new race. But since there are many such 
traits, a single species within the same region would not 
give rise to a single new species but to many such. Thus, 


29 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


as contrasted with wild rabbits, tame rabbits may be 
divided into many races. 

But a mating limited to individuals of the same peculiar- 
ities is impossible in the wild state. The character of the 
mates there depends entirely on accident, on the mating of 
certain individuals at the moment of the mating season. 
There is not always sexual selection; mating is often pro- 
miscuous. Where there is such selection, it is limited to one 
sex. The victorious stag will have relations with all the 
does of his herd, regardless of their properties. And the 
selection—if present at all—is carried out among a small 
number only. 

In the wild state, therefore, the most varied deviations 
will be transmitted within a certain species. These devia- 
tions continue to mingle again. It is impossible to see how 
natural selection can here produce new important species 
with coincident traits. If a constant progressive evolution 
takes place owing to the survival of the fittest, with new 
properties and by means of their transmission, this evolu- 
tion must lead to a disintegration of existing species into a 
confused mass of varying individuals, all similarity among 
which will progressively disappear. ‘The theory of the 
origin of species becomes a theory of their dissolution, and 
it remains impossible to grasp how species based on the 
similarity of numerous individuals should ever arise. But, 
as a matter of fact, we find in nature many more indi- 
viduals having coincident traits than we do among domestic 
animals. We have already pointed out how great is the 


30 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


number of races of tame rabbits, as compared with the 
uniformity found among wild rabbits and field hares. 

And the number of species of wild animals is not in- 
creasing, while almost each new year supplies us with a new 
race in the case of many domestic animals: 

“But geology shows us, that from an early part of the 
tertiary period the number of species of shells, and that 
from the middle part of this same period the number of 
mammals, has not greatly or at all increased.” ” 

In the introduction to his fine book on the distribution of 
the animal world, Kobelt says: “I have not been able to 
convince myself that a sole, uniform transformation of the 
animal kingdom is taking place over long periods, as a 
strict interpretation of Darwinism would require... . 
Beginning with the middle pliocene period (the geological 
period immediately preceding the origin of man —K.), we 
cannot prove with any degree of certainty the new origin 
of any species.” * 

Whence then the great similarity between so many in- 
dividuals in the wild state? 

We cannot explain this similarity by considering only 
the individual and the evolution of the individual. We are 
here dealing with a mass phenomenon, which may be ex- 
plained only by means of a factor lying outside of the 
individuals, above them, influencing them all in the same 
manner. It is not hard to discover this factor if we con- 


2Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Harvard Classics Edition, 
chap. iv, p. 140. 
8 Die Verbreitung der Tierwelt, Leipzig, 1902. 


31 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


sider the varieties of animals in the natural state. Among 
races of domestic animals, the individual ancestors, the 
ancestral tree, is of importance. But the varieties of wild 
animals are “geographical races”. This is true even for 
the domestic cat, which resists artificial breeding; it is all 
the more true of animals in the unrestrained, natural state. 
Thus, among lions, we may distinguish the varieties of 
the Barbary lion, the Senegal lion, the Cape lion, the Per- 
sian lion, the Guzerat lion. Among elephants, we distinguish 
between the Indian and the African. Rhinoceroses are 
divided into several varieties: the Indian rhinoceros, “whose 
area of distribution seems limited to the Indian peninsula” ; 
the Varana rhinoceros, “as far as our knowledge goes, is 
found only in Java”. ‘The half-armored rhinoceros is 
found only in Sumatra (Cerator hinus sumatrensis).” 
“The area of distribution of the double-horned rhinoceros 
(Atelodus bicornis and Atelodus simus) now extends over 
all of Central Africa.” ‘The hornless rhinoceros is said 
now to be limited to the southern half of Africa.” * 
Similarly in the case of the hare: “AIl of central Europe 
and a small portion of western Asia is the home of the 
Continental hare. In the south, it is the Mediterranean 
hare, a deviating species of small size and reddish color; in 
the high mountains, it is the Alpine hare, in the far north, 
the snow hare. . . . The African hares differ from ours by 
their smaller size and also by their uncommonly long 


ears.’’ § 


4Brehm: Tierleben. 5 Ibid. 
B25 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


In other words, it is the geographical differences which 
produce the differences between varieties in the natural 
state: differences in climate, configuration of the soil, the 
nature of the nutrition and the mode of obtaining it, the 
species of enemies, etc. On the other hand, it is the wni- 
formity of the conditions of life within a certain region 
which produces the similarity between the individuals of 
the species concerned. ‘This similarity is more powerful 
than the differences, the variations of the individuals. The 
latter tend to be dissimilar, to diverge. The conditions of 
life in nature, in a certain region, are the same, however, 
for all, operate in the same way, and oppose the tendency 
to diverge. 

If we thus consider the conditions of life, the milieu, as 
the decisive factor in the moulding of varieties and species 
in the natural state, we are eliminating the difficulties that 
would arise if we should proceed—in our explanation of 
natural varieties—from the experiences obtained in the 
breeding of the races of domestic animals. 

We are now enabled to understand not only the similarity 
of the individuals of the same species within a certain 
region, but also the constancy, the tendency to immuta- 
bility, of species in historical times, as well as their alter- 
ations in geological periods. As long as the milieu remains 
the same, the species will not change. But the milieu does 
not permanently remain the same. The earth changes, 
alters its position in the firmament. Passing through 
space, together with the entire solar system, it may at times 


33 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


encounter colder regions, at other times warmer ones, in 
what we call the universe. Nor is its position always the 
same with regard to the sun; its axis oscillates, and many 
portions of the earth’s surface may thus obtain a more 
polar climate than formerly, while others obtain a more 
equatorial climate. 

Far more certain than these changes are those arising 
from the gradually growing coldness of the earth, its grad- 
ual shrinking. Continents and oceans are formed, some of 
the latter deep, others shallow; flat lands and mountains, 
marine currents and trade winds, nothing permanent, 
everything changing, but changing only in endless periods. 
For thousands of years the same condition will prevail in 
a certain region; then it will gradually change; moisture 
yields to drought, warmth to cold, low plains are lifted up, 
twisted into mountain chains, or subside and furnish sea 
bottoms. When such changes ensue, the organisms of the 
region cannot remain the same. Some are destroyed, some 
are driven out, forced to migrate, some adapt themselves to 
the new conditions, which they may do in many ways, for 
which Lamarck and Darwin, as well as their disciples, have 
gathered very interesting illustrations. But once the or- 
ganisms of the region are adapted to the new condition of 
affairs, we no longer find any cause for further changes 
of their condition, and they will remain in their new forms 
until new changes in their life conditions are introduced. 

This is not a new view. Darwin himself, in the historical 
sketch introducing his book on the origin of species, points 


34 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


out that Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire had stated it to 
be his opinion (in 1850) of the traits of species, “that 
they are permanent for each species so long as it repro- 
duces itself within the same conditions, but that they 
change when the external conditions of life change’’. 

Darwin fully recognised the effect of the altered condi- 
tions of life as well as of the use or non-use of organs. But 
he underestimated their importance, since he was com- 
pletely dominated by the observations made in artificial 
selection, and by the assumption of a constant struggle for 
existence under the pressure of overpopulation. This lat- 
ter view he owed to Malthus; it is still considered a cast- 
iron law of natural science. 

But if we examine the struggle for existence, we shall 
find that overpopulation—in other words, the struggle be- 
tween individuals of the same species for fodder—plays 
but a small réle, is only an exceptional phenomenon. 

A few concrete examples will help us. Hares, as is well 
known, are very fruitful. The female hare gives birth to a 
number of young as early as the month of March; very few 
of these survive; how many, depends chiefly on the weather. 
Snow, freezing weather, will destroy almost all of them. 
Sunshine, warm breezes, will enable many to live. It is 
clear that in these cases the selection among the young 
hares is but little concerned with the number struggling 
for existence. The struggle here amounts to a struggle 
against the external conditions of life, not against nu- 
merous competitors of the same species. 


35 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


Or, let us consider antelopes in an African steppe. Some- 
times there is drought for many weeks; springs run dry, 
pools of water evaporate, many antelopes die of thirst. 
Only those remain alive which can bear thirst longest, or 
whose organs are so delicate as to enable them to sense 
the presence of water at great distances, better than the 
other antelopes. The struggle for existence here certainly 
produces an extensive selection, but it is a struggle against 
the external conditions of life, and has nothing to do with 
the number of antelopes. The quantity of water did not 
become insufficient because it was drunk by too many 
antelopes. 

Another enemy of the antelopes is the lion. But the 
lhion’s strength and cruelty do not depend upon the number 
of antelopes. ‘There may even ensue a struggle between two 
lions for a single antelope, if there are not many antelopes, 
the stronger lion being victorious. But even this is of rare 
occurrence, 

Far from being the general and constant cause of the 
struggle for existence, the great fruitfulness of certain 
organisms is rather a weapon enabling them to maintain 
themselves in this struggle, in which they would otherwise 
succumb. ‘The struggle for existence, as a rule, is not a 
struggle between members of the same species when it has 
become too numerous, but a struggle of the individual or a 
group of individuals of the same species against the ex- 
ternal conditions of life, which include not only the 
inorganic surroundings, but also the organic surroundings. 


36 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


Changes in these conditions of life also involve changes in 
the mode of the struggle for existence, in the method of 
using the organs; old organs or forms of organs become 
dispensable, new organs, or new forms of old organs, become 
necessary. If the species succeeds in evolving in the strug- 
gle with the new conditions, and thus becoming a new 
species, it will maintain itself ; otherwise it will be destroyed. 
We may judge from remains found in the bowels of the 
earth how many such species have been destroyed in the 
earth’s history. 

The theory of overpopulation proves nothing, therefore, 
against the assumption that the final cause for the forma- 
tion of new species is in the changes of the conditions of life. 
Another view must still be mentioned: the view that ac- 
quired characteristics cannot be inherited. 

Modern physiologists distinguish between the body cells 
and the reproductive cells, the “body plasm” and the 
“erm plasm”. The germ plasm, according to their view, 
is immutable, being transmitted again and again. But, 
according to Weismann, it is immutable even to the extent 
that it is not influenced by the qualities acquired by the 
body of the individual during his life. The individual 
cannot, therefore, transmit these acquisitions. Thus the 
formation of new, transmittable traits of species by the 
influence of new conditions of life on the body, is precluded. 
But this view was emphatically opposed, from its first ap- 
pearance, particularly by Darwinists. Darwin, himself, 
assumed the heredity of acquired characteristics, as did 


37 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


also Herbert Spencer. Recent experiments show, on the 
one hand, that external influences do produce changes 
which are transmitted, and, on the other hand, that the 
germ plasm is by no means absolutely independent of the 
body plasm. This question is excellently treated by 
Tschulok in his little book on evolution; the following 
experiment is particularly interesting: 

‘““T'wo races of hens were treated, one pure black, the other 
pure white. The races-were pure, i.¢e., it was known def- 
initely for each individual that its parents, grandparents 
and great-grandparents had all presented the same char- 
acteristics as the individual itself; in other words, that no 
mixture had taken place. When such a white hen was 
crossed with a white cock, their posterity were white ex- 
clusively. Similarly, mating a black hen with a black cock 
produced only black posterity. 

“Now the following experiment was made: 

“The ovary of a white hen was removed and implanted 
in the body of a black hen; the black hen’s ovary was also 
implanted in the white hen. The operation was performed 
so neatly that the animals remained alive and were capable, 
after the wounds had healed, of producing posterity by the 
normal methods. ‘The white hen with the black ovary was 
now fructified by a black cock. We should here expect the 
posterity to be black, for the ova in the ovary of the white 
hen came from a black hen, and the male semen was like- 
wise obtained from a black cock. However, the chickens 
were colored black and white. Similarly, the black hen, 


38 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


with an ovary taken from a white hen, was fructified by a 
white cock. The posterity included not only pure white 
chickens, but also chickens with black spots.” ° 

This result is the more astonishing in that it was attained 
by powerful mechanical interference, not by a gradual, 
organic alteration. ‘The ovary in the body of the black 
hen had already attained full development when it was 
implanted in the white hen’s body, and yet the influence of 
the new body cells on the transferred germ cells was so 
strong as to enable the new body fully to impress its type 
upon the ovary. It might be assumed that the influence of 
changed somatic traits on the germ plasm must be still 
stronger in cases where the body suffers changes by reason 
of the influence of altered conditions, before its germ cells 
attain full maturity, with the result that the process of 
maturing goes on completely under the influence of the new 
properties. 

We, therefore, see no reason that would oblige us to 
assume that acquired characteristics cannot be trans- 
mitted. The manner in which heredity works is, however, 
still completely hidden. Nor may we assume that all ac- 
quired characteristics are inherited. Lesions and mutila- 
tions, for instance, are hardly transmitted. Weismann cut 
off the tails of many generations of mice, without ever 
obtaining a tailless mouse. Many an apparent case of 
heredity may also be explained by the fact that the pos- 
terity live under the same conditions as their ancestors, 

6 Tschulok, Entwicklungstheorie, Stuttgart, J. H. W. Dietz, 1912. 


39 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


and therefore acquire and present the same character- 
istics, without necessarily inheriting them. 

There are many degrees among the inherited character- 
istics, Some are more persistent than others. ‘There are 
inherited characteristics which the individual may easily 
lose if it enters a milieu deviating from that: producing 
these qualities. Other traits, on the other hand, are stub- 
bornly retained for many generations, even with the great- 
est variations in the conditions of life. Relatively, as com- 
pared with those traits that change easily, inherited traits 
of the latter kind may be considered immutable. But if 
they were acquired owing to the influence of special condi- 
tions of life, it would be impossible to understand why they 
should not be capable of changing under the influence of 
altered conditions of life. 

Many scientists distinguish between race traits proper, 
in man, which are said to be absolutely unchanging, such as 
the color of the eyes, the hair, the skin, the shape of the 
skull; and secondary or fluctuating properties, such as 
bodily stature, bone structure, muscular system, fatty tis- 
sue, etc. 

No doubt there is a difference between race traits of 
these two kinds. But perhaps this difference should be 
ascribed solely to the fact that the conditions bringing 
about the fluctuating properties are more susceptible and 
more swiftly susceptible to change than those causing the 
apparently immutable race traits. The former may change 
so quickly as to enable us to observe their influence without 


40 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


difficulty. The other conditions we do not even know, 
perhaps for the reason that they do not change per- 
ceptibly within the period of our observations. But we 
cannot say of any race trait that it is absolutely un- 
changing; such a trait would be the sole unchanging 
phenomenon in this changing world. 

On this point, Fishberg says: 

“Recent investigations have led to a modification or even 
complete abandonment of the theory of the constancy and 
persistence of race traits. For a long time, some anthro- 
pologists have maintained that the external environment, 
particularly the nutrition, the social and geographical sur- 
roundings, have a powerful influence on the modification 
of some traits, such as musculature, stature, etc. Many 
even go so far as to say that these agencies may alter pig- 
mentation and head-form. Ridgeway, going further, 
assumes that the duration of human types in a certain 
region, and over long periods, is an expression not of the 
influence of heredity, but of environment, and that, on the 
other hand, modifications of the human form found in the 
Mediterranean region, and in central and northwest Africa, 
may be traced back to differences of climate, soil and 
national products. 

“This theory of the decisive influence of environment on 
the alteration or modification of basic somatic traits may 
easily be applied to some of the race traits, . . . In some 
regions it has been found that the soil has a powerful 
influence on the stature of the inhabitants; for instance, 


41 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


the great height of persons inhabiting the State of Ken- 
tucky is very probably to be explained by the presence of 
hard water in this region, Similarly (according to Rése), 
the stature of the population in Gotha, Germany, has been 
undergoing changes since the introduction of hard water. 
Observations have also been made on the influence of en- 
vironment on the head-form—a trait that has hitherto been 
considered immutable under all circumstances. .. . 

“Professor Franz Boas, of New York, recently arrived 
at the conclusion, based on his investigations, that the 
absolute persistence of human types is an untenable theory. 
His investigations of the physical characteristics of im- 
migrants have revealed an extremely interesting condition; 
he finds that the children of immigrants are of higher stat- 
ure and better bodily development than their parents born 
in Europe. He has also discovered a very remarkable 
alteration in the head-form of children born in America 
after their parents had landed. Even a child born abroad, 
and not more than one year old on its arrival in America, 
will retain the foreign head-form. But a child born in 
America, though only a few months after the parents have 
landed, has the American head-form.” ? 

Other investigators before Boas had found that the 
whites in the United States acquire more and more Indian 
traits in the course of a few generations, thus becoming 
*“Indianized”’, 

But it would be premature to infer from these facts that 


7 Fishberg, German edition, pp. 5 et seq. 
42 


RACES OF ANIMALS 


the American milieu will ultimately make Indians of the 
whites. 

Even among animals, the milieu is only one of the cir- 
cumstances determining somatic forms and_ physical 
strength. Other things being equal, these conditions will 
produce both; but these conditions also include the organ- 
ism on which the milieu is working. The same milieu will 
not necessarily influence different organisms in the same 
way, but may have different effects on each. If various 
races are transplanted from the milieus producing them, 
into a new environment, they will all be changed by this 
environment, but not necessarily all in the same way. 

The American conditions may have a different effect on a 
white man than on a Mongolian or on a Negro. 

Other factors enter also, however, which make the race 
problem in the case of man much more complicated even 
than among animals. 


43 


CHAPTER III 
THE RACES OF MAN 


We have found that the races of animals in the natural 
condition, and the races of domestic animals, are two very 
different things. It would, therefore, be erroneous to apply 
to one of these groups observations made in the case of the 
other. 

The pure race of domestic animals may always be traced 
back to a specific parent couple. <A specific race (variety) 
of wild animals may be traced to a certain region. The 
naive view of primitive peoples derived each species of wild 
animals from a specific parent couple—as they also de- 
rived each nation from such a couple. When the Deluge 
was impending, Noah, in order to preserve the animal 
creation, took of each species ‘‘a male and his female” into 
the Ark, later liberating them again. We are not told how 
the carnivorous animals kept alive when only two specimens 
of each variety of herbivorous animals were available. 

Primitive though this view may be, it still prevails to a 
great extent even in present-day thinking. In the case of 
related varieties and species, we still speak of a “common 
blood”’, a common descent. 

Darwin says: “All the individuals of the same species, 
and all the species of the same genus, or even higher group, 


44: 


THE RACES OF MAN 


must have descended from common parents; and therefore, 
in however distant and isolated parts of the world they are 
now found, they must, in the course of successive genera- 
tions, have passed from some one part to the others.” * 

This common descent from a single parent couple, which 
may be observed in races produced artificially, is Saeey 
improbable in the case of natural species. 

We know nothing of the origin of life, but we must 
assume that, like all other phenomena, this origin is subject 
to the law that like causes under like circumstances will 
always produce like effects. As soon as the conditions 
and causes of organic life were present on earth, it is not 
probable that an isolated speck of albumen took shape, 
with living functions, multiplying its number by growth 
and fission, thus becoming the parent of all existing organ- 
isms, but we must assume that primitive organisms, how- 
ever we may conceive their shape—were formed in all places 
in which the conditions for their existence were given—and 
that they immediately expanded and peopled their entire 
‘nutrition area”. They began to multiply as soon as suit- 
able areas were available, and they began to assume varying 
forms as these areas, and with them the conditions of life, 
became more manifold. Each new higher species therefore 
must have been present in numerous specimens from its very 
beginning. 

And we must make this assumption even in the case of 
the highest forms. We have no evidence that humanity 

1 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Speeies, New York, 1860, p. 400. 


45 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


is descended from a single couple of ape-men. It is more 
probable that the evolution proceeded on the basis of an 
entire species of ape-like animals, which had become subject 
to conditions bringing about their development into hu- 
mans. Common racial traits among animals in the natural 
condition do not therefore by any means point to a common 
origin—not to the remotest degree—in a single parent 
couple, and therefore not to blood relationship. But it may 
be assumed that a great number of them are more or less 
closely related. The number of blood relations within a 
variety will probably be the greater, the longer this variety 
has been in existence and the smaller the territory now 
inhabited by it. 

The varieties of an animal species in the natural state 
within a certain region are extremely limited; therefore, 
there is only one such variety in a specific region, and this 
variety does not change as long as the conditions of the 
region remain the same. The races of a species of domestic 
animals within a certain region may, on the other hand, 
be quite numerous. They are being constantly trans- 
formed, become constantly more numerous, and become 
more and more different from the primitive race from which 
they take their origin. 

This condition is brought about by the fact that man is 
able to provide an artificial environment for the animal 
races shaped by him, thus abolishing in great measure the 
effects of the natural environment. In the case of animals 
in the natural state, the organism is adapted to its life 


46 


THE RACES OF MAN 


conditions: in the case of domestic conditions, the life 
conditions are adapted to the organism which man is breed- 
ing in accordance with his needs. MHigh-breed domestic 
animals could probably no longer exist without the aid of 
man. 

This new kind of adaptation—not of the organism to its 
environment, but of the environment to the organism—con- 
ducted by man for his domestic animals, he, of course, ap- 
plies in the highest degree when dealing with himself. It is 
this process which causes man to cease to be a wild animal, 
but it does not make him a domestic animal. 

In the accommodation of its life conditions to the organ- 
ism, the domestic animal is purely passive; this adaptation 
is undertaken by man for the animal. Man is the active 
element in the process. But the animal ceases to be an end 
in itself. Its organism becomes subservient to the purposes 
of man. But, like the animal in the wild state, man knows 
no higher end than himself; he alters his milieu to swit 
himself. 

To be sure, the purpose served by man may not be ex- 
clusively his own personality. Even among animals in the 
natural state there are social animals, among whom the 
individual cannot exist for itself alone, or at least it cannot 
exist fully for itself alone; each is obliged to cooperate with 
others; its welfare depends on the welfare of the social 
group to which it belongs. Society is higher than the 
individual; its purposes are higher than those of the 
individual. 

Ary 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


Even in the animal world, the dependence of the in- 
dividual on the group to which it belongs is carried to a 
high stage. It is probably not an accident that precisely 
those animal species were best fitted to become domestic 
animals which were able to subordinate their individuality 
to an outer compulsion. In the case of man, the social 
cohesion, owing to language and economy, is much closer 
than in most animals—perhaps excepting bees and ants. 
The individual’s dependence on society increases. But 
great as may be the occasional contradiction between the 
interests of the totality and those of the individual, in the 
case of man, the social interests are always human in- 
terests, and are therefore always directly or indirectly the 
interests of the individual himself. We are here dealing 
with a primitive, simple society, and are therefore dis- 
regarding class differences. 

Removal from the natural state usually has not the same 
effect on man as on the other animals. This removal is 
man’s own work, the product of his knowledge of the con- _ 
ditions of life, of his mental superiority over the rest of 
organic nature. It is the outcome of his ability to 
strengthen and variegate his organs of sensual perception 
and motion by means of artificial organs, and thereby to 
surmount the obstacles in surrounding nature to a greater 
extent than he could in the natural condition, 7.e., aided by 
his bodily organs alone. Each new advance in this field, 
each victory over a natural barrier, makes man face a new 
difficulty, new problems, but also provides him with new, 


48 


THE RACES OF MAN 


hitherto unknown means and knowledge for their solution. 
The natural environment to which the organisms of wild 
animals are adapted do not change in historical times, i.¢., 
as measured in human records. The artificial environment 
adapted by man to his own organism, has been changing 
considerably in historical times. Doubtless nature also is 
in constant flux, but the rate of change is imperceptible, 
as measured by the advances in the evolution of technology 
and social forms among men. The natural environment of 
wild animals may therefore be considered unchanging as 
compared with the constantly changing artificial environ- 
ment of man. 

This environment is adapted to the needs of the human 
organism. But it also has its effect on this organism. It 
makes no new demands on most of the bodily organs, per- 
haps even reduces the number of its former demands; for 
example, in the case of the teeth, which may deteriorate 
as a result. But it makes more and more demands on 
those organs which have created this environment, the 
organs of cognition and judgment, or, in other words, of 
mental activity in general. 

In the natural state, the same situations repeat them- 
selves again and again with very slight differences for each 
animal species, so long as no alterations ensue in the en- 
vironment. The experiences, judgments and actions arising 
from these situations therefore tend to uniformity, to be- 
come fixed habits. And, like other acquired characteristics, 
habits practised for generations and turning out to be ex- 


49 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


pedient for the organism, finally become hereditary; they 
become impulses, instincts, which are followed without 
thought. 

In the case of man, the instinctive life is more and more 
forced into the background, as the natural environment is 
replaced by an artificial environment and as the changes in 
the latter proceed more and more rapidly, as they intro- 
duce more and more new problems, which cannot be solved 
without careful investigation. The organs of mental activ- 
ity are therefore made to deal with more and more varied 
new tasks, are put to more and more exertion and thus 
develop more and more. ‘The demands made upon the 
mental organs are of increasing complexity and variety; 
likewise, the manner in which these organs are called upon 
to act. Simultaneously, the relations of men to each other, 
both between individuals and tribes, become quite varied, 
with the result that the most manifold possibilities arise for 
mental development. ‘The organs of the human spirit 
become the most valuable, but also the most adaptable of 
all organs, those subject to the swiftest and most powerful 
transformations. 

We find an opposite evolutionary trend among domestic 
animals, the development of whose organs depends on man. 
But from most of these animals man asks only more meat, 
milk, wool, eggs, traction power; he rarely asks increased 
intelligence, never independent judgment. Aside from 
dogs, the progress of breeding, in the case of domestic 
animals, is accompanied by a decrease of intelligence, and 


50 


THE RACES OF MAN 


even in the case of the dog, it is doubtful whether the 
“noblest”? races are also the most intelligent. 

As man’s intelligence and technology improve, he be- 
comes more able to offer resistance to the influences of the 
life conditions surrounding him. He may, therefore, when 
geographical conditions change, maintain his hereditary 
somatic traits, his racial peculiarities, better than in the 
natural condition. ‘This reduces the effect of accommoda- 
tion in man, and emphasises that of heredity. But this 
applies only to the somatic traits in the narrower sense, 
not to the organs of mental life, which, when enhanced in 
sensitiveness and variability, at once react to any altera- 
tion in the life conditions. 

But in the case of man, a change, not only in the artificial 
conditions of life, but also in those that are natural, may 
easily ensue, while such changes are rare in the natural 
state. In nature, we have usually only slow changes, al- 
terations over geological periods, such as in ice ages, in the 
rising and subsiding of continents, which cause important 
and permanent migrations of animal species. Such proc- 
esses take place so slowly that the organisms concerned 
are eliminated almost imperceptibly, step by step, thus 
facilitating their adaptation to the new conditions of neigh- 
-bouring regions. Man, however, acquires means of locomo- 
tion enabling him to cover great distances with increasing 
speed, and his technology in the winning of foodstuffs, 
the manufacturing of clothing, the construction of houses, 
the uses of fuel, illumination, etc., enable him to enter 


51 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


regions in which he could not possibly maintain himself in 
his natural state. 

But with the possibility of undertaking swift and ex- 
tended journeys, man’s desire for such journeys is awak- 
ened. In the natural state, the fruitfulness of each species 
of organisms is adapted to its life conditions, with a result- 
ing state of equilibrium between the various species. My 
book on increase and evolution takes up this question more 
in detail. I am here obliged merely to suggest this thought, 
like so many others. 

Man’s technology disturbs this Eadie of equilibrium. 
His fruitfulness is now subject to changing conditions, like- 
wise his mortality. This may sometimes lead to the dying 
out of certain tribes, while at other times it may cause so ~ 
extensive an increase as to deprive posterity of the neces- 
sary space in the home country. Later, the attraction of 
certain regions for strangers also is an element, even when 
such strangers are not driven from their homes by over- 
population. This attraction itself depends on the evolu- 
tion of technology and economy and may be of varying 
nature. River constructions or improvements in naviga- 
tion may render the shores of rivers or the coasts of oceans, 
formerly desolate and inaccessible, so attractive as to make 
them a goal for poorer tribes. In our own days, the gold 
resources of Alaska have caused a migration into that 
region. 

The most varied causes and opportunities for migrations 
arise. The same race may now be found living in the most 


52 


THE RACES OF MAN 


varied regions and climates. These migrations may pro- 
ceed so swiftly, and be so temporary, as to preclude any 
possibility of the race’s adaptation to the new conditions, 
its acquisition of new hereditary traits. But even when a 
migration leads to permanent settlement in a new region, 
the artificial environment created by man in that region will 
be so powerful as to enable it to resist the influence of the 
natural environment over periods that may be of relatively 
considerable duration. 

We know nothing of man in the natural state. Even the 
most primitive men we know have a certain technology. 
We do not know whether man in the natural state inhab- 
ited only a specific region of uniform character, or several 
regions with varying character, whether he then consti- 
tuted a single geographical race or several such. At any 
rate, his race character must have been entirely dependent 
on nature. 

Technical and economic progress then creates two dif- 
ferent tendencies. Increased impulses and opportunities 
for migrations induce many races gradually to spread over 
the most varied regions; the varying natural conditions of 
the new environments have an influence in the direction of 
substituting changed race traits for old race traits, of 
substituting for the old race, or placing by its side—if 
not all of the race has emigrated—a group of new races. 
The alteration in race traits takes place either directly, 
through the influence of natural factors: heat, cold, 
drought, moisture, light, darkness, etc.; or, indirectly, 


53 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


through the struggle against these factors, through the use 
, of certain organs, disuse of others. Depending on the 
development of technology and of the social conditions, 
this struggle may assume different forms, and in the same 
region may therefore produce various race types among 
varying modes of production. If a steppe becomes inhab- 
ited by fugitive nomads, it will produce different traits in 
these nomads from those produced in a later population 
with a sufficiently developed technology to enable it to 
transform the steppe into fruitful farm land by means of 
irrigation, and therefore cultivating this land as a per- 
manent peasantry. 

Therefore, the advances in technology and the migrations 
increase the number of race differences and create new 
geographical races. On the other hand, however, tech- 
nology, beyond a certain level, may retard the formation 
of such races. ‘The higher the evolution of human tech- 
nology, the more independent becomes the race of the 
nature of the environment. ‘The race may maintain its 
character in the most varied regions, even such as have no 
similarity with the region in which the race originated. 
Thus, we find Europeans, Chinese, Negroes, in the most 
varied parts of the world, living under the most different 
climates. 

But no matter how highly developed its technology, no 
race can permanently and completely escape from the in- 
fluence of the environment. It may most easily escape from 
the organic environment, the flora and fauna, which may 


54 


THE RACES OF MAN 


be changed rather easily by human intervention. On the 
other hand, the influence of telluric factors—altitude above 
sea level, configuration of the soil, quantity of sunlight, 
heat, cold—can never be entirely eliminated. 

But even here our remarks refer only to somatic race 
traits proper. Even the most temporary change in the 
location of a race, producing no alteration in the physical 
appearance, may, by opening up new regions, with new 
conditions, produce new impressions, new problems, may 
not be without effect on the mental life, and therefore also 
on its organs, whose quality, like that of any organ, de- 
pends on the degree and nature of their use. The more 
diligently the race applies itself to resist the influence of 
the new milieu, the more its somatic race traits are thus 
retained, the more will its organs of mental life be exerted 
in a new manner and consequently be subject to change 
under the influence of the new environment. 

The possibility that a race may pass beyond the geo- 
graphical boundaries set up by nature, that therefore the 
human races may cease to be geographical races, like the 
varieties of animals in the natural state, often leads—and 
has led more and more of late—to the presence of a number 
of races in the same region, living together more or less 
amicably. There results a new possibility which is very 
exceptional in the natural state, namely, that of race miz- 
ture, which may at times lead to the creation of new races, 
but very often merely disintegrates the old races, for which 
it substitutes a conglomeration of the most varied ingredi- 


55 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


ents. This process of race mixture has been going on for 
tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of 
years: 

“The present presents millions of cases of this, as did 
also the past, and there is no such thing as an unmixed race 
on this small planet with its easy communications. . . . On 
this earth, all the races gradually merge into each other, 
and each race is composed of various subdivisions.” ? 

The further a race is removed from its original habita- 
tions and its original conditions, the greater its migrations, 
the richer its history, the more developed its commerce; in 
other words, the higher its status, the more will be the 
opportunities it has had for race mixture, the less will it 
retain of its original “‘race’’; the more has it ceased to be a 
“pure” race, and the more varied will be the race elements 
of other provenience which it has absorbed. Unless the 
rather permanent influence of uniform natural conditions 
in a certain region has opposed this manifold character and 
tended to create a new homogeneous geographical race, 
cross-breedings and atavism in such a popu/ation will pro- 
duce the greatest variety of somatic, and particularly, of 
mental, traits, the latter being far more variable than the 
former. ‘The higher the technical and social stages of 
evolution, therefore, the smaller will be the influence of the 
natural conditions. 

But social progress produces not only a tendency to 
dissolve the old traditional forms, but also gives rise to 

aRatzel: <Anthropogeographie, vol. ii, p. 587. 


56 


THE RACES OF MAN 


factors tending to create new types within a population. 
This is brought about by the division of labour, which is 
but rarely found in the animal kingdom—again excepting 
bees and ants—but which attains considerable proportions 
in human society and becomes one of the most important 
bases of its progress. 

The division into callings sometimes becomes a division 
into classes, ruling anc. ruled classes, exploiting and ex- 
ploited. The division of labour finally leads to a division 
of society into workers and non-workers. Such divisions 
result in the formation of groups within a people, each of 
which makes use of its natural organs differently, or makes 
use of different organs, and in their living each under dif- 
ferent conditions, in a different environment. Under these 
circumstances, each of these groups acquires its special 
properties, sometimes somatic traits, but chiefly mental 
traits, for the economic and social divisions create more 
differences in mental aptitudes than of occupation in those 
that are physical in the narrower sense. 

We have already observed that the same race, by scat- 
tering over various regions, with different modes of pro- 
duction, may suffer changes. We now find that the same 
race, within the same region, may present such divisions, 
owing to economic influences. On the other hand, similar- 
ity of occupation may impress the same trait upon members 
of different races and tend to eliminate such differences as 
may have been present. 

Ratzel, for instance, observes: ‘‘In many cases, when we 


57 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


speak of ‘race’, it would be better to speak of ‘class’. 
Throughout all peoples, somatic differences accompany the 
division into castes, which division is the more emphatic, 
the further removed the races are from culture and free- 
dom. ... The distribution of skin pigment most fre- 
quently accompanies differences of castes, for obvious 
reasons. . . . We cannot trace the precise scale of colour 
dividing the upper and lower classes upon one and the same 
island. Cook and Forster state that the former are lighter 
in colour, also taller and more refined in bearing. G. 
Forster, in his exaggerated manner, imagines that these 
nobles are so far ahead of the ordinary man as to appear an 
entirely different type of human. Yet, he expressly em- 
phasises the relation between a lighter skin and delicate 
features with a more comfortable, inactive mode of life. But 
he found in the mind and character of these individuals a 
certain refinement, if not a certain nobility. The nobles, 
being both chieftains and priests, were also the will-power 
and the intelligentsia of Polynesia, with a monopoly of 
knowledge and of philosophy based on knowledge.” * Such 
is Ratzel’s view of this question. 

Different classes may assume the character of different 
races. On the other hand, the meeting of many races, each 
developing an occupation of its own, may lead to their 
taking up various callings or social positions within the 
same community; race becomes class. Particularly fre- 
quent is the case of a poor but warlike nomadic race at- 


3 Ratzel, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 590, 591. 
58 


THE RACES OF MAN 


tacking a prosperous, peaceful peasant population and 
subjecting it, the former race then assuming the function 
of a warrior nobility with a monopoly of national de- 
fence. This nobility will develop exclusively warlike prop- 
erties, despise productive labour, and the workers will 
become poor, badly nourished, defenceless, and unmilitant, 
which qualities may, in some cases, develop to the point of 
cowardice. 

When race traits coincide with vocational traits, they 
are further sharpened and intensified by the division of 
labour. 

On the other hand, the intensification of a property 
acquired in vocational life or class life into a race trait 
may be encouraged by the fact that the members of a class 
or of a calling are forced to marry only within their own 
group. ‘This may be in part a consequence of the arro- 
gance of the upper class, which despises the other classes, 
but it may also result from reasons of selection: the ruling 
class wishes to preserve undiminished its predominant qual- 
ities, by which it has obtained power, and therefore seeks 
to avoid any mingling with other groups, lacking in such 
qualities. The heredity of the traits of the dominant class 
must be rendered safe. On the other hand, groups that 
have been depressed to the lowest level are prohibited from 
mingling with the rest of the population, in order that the 
latter may not be contaminated with the defects of these 
outcasts. 

As in the case of domestic animals it is also sought to 


59 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


conserve predominant traits among the classes by main- 
taining the race “pure”. But man is not a domestic an- 
imal, and purity of race encounters many difficulties in the 
human existence. 

It is not sufficient, in the case of domestic animals, that 
the stud-animals be preserved from breeding with foreign 
species. EXven among these race animals, it is always the 
best specimens that are chosen and used as reproducing 
animals. ‘The others, less excellent, are often destroyed 
and always excluded from reproduction. 

But no class among humans may proceed so harshly 
toward its own members, no matter how far superior the 
class interest may appear in its eyes to that of the in- 
dividual. A class often arrogates to itself, or bestows 
upon ‘the child’s father, the right to decide whether the 
child is to be brought up or killed. ‘The Christian order 
of Teutonic Knights were freed from the necessity of mak- 
ing this choice by their opportunity to put into a monas- 
tery weak or unwarlike boys, and thus prevent them from 
producing legitimate offspring. But these methods of 
selection were not always applied in accordance with con- 
siderations of breeding only, often being crossed by other 
considerations. A father desiring an heir, and not having 
obtained one that was healthy, probably did not kill his 
weak child, but brought him up, and instead of condemning 
him to celibacy may even have married him off. 

In order to preserve the race pure as a class, it is neces- 
sary to have complete control of the sexual life of woman 


60 


THE RACES OF MAN 


—not of man. The man’s illegitimate offspring do not 
become members of the ruling class, but adultery on the 
part of the legitimate wife, unless discovered, impairs the 
purity of the race. The freer woman is, the easier it will 
be for her to commit adultery. Lack of freedom for the 
woman, when it goes so far as to shut her up in a harem, 
like a cow in a stable, is always associated with polygamy, 
but since the number of women everywhere is about equal to 
that of men, it implies that women not belonging to the 
ruling class may be elevated to the status of wife. Further- 
more, even the woman in the harem is by no means a cow 
in a stable and completely deprived of her freedom of 
action. Even such a woman may find opportunities for 
adultery, as was already observed by the Sultan Sche- 
herban, who said there was only one means of assuring one- 
self of a woman’s fidelity: killing her after the first 
embrace. 

If, in spite of all these obstacles, the purity of a race is 
maintained intact, further misfortune threatens from in- 
breeding. Inbreeding may remain harmless for long 
periods, when only healthy individuals are chosen for re- 
production. The exploiting class, which has consolidated 
its power and controls great wealth, is, however, likely to 
yield to a life of idle enjoyment, with its degenerating 
results. When this is the case, inbreeding still further 
accentuates decay, and it does this the more, the purer the 
race. | 

We thus find that the phenomenon of race is far more 


61 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


complicated in man than in the animal world. The sharp- 
ness of race demarcation, which is evident in the case of 
animals, disappears more and more among men. In the 
place of sharply distinct races, unchanged for long periods, 
we find a constant and increasingly rapid process of race 
disintegration; the formation of new races, race mixtures, 
conditioned by the general process of technical, economic, 
social evolution, arising from this process and closely inter- 
laced with it. It becomes more and more difficult to dis- 
tinguish between inherited properties and those acquired by 
the individual; races become more manifold, also the race 
traits, more and more varied are the individuals within 
each human group, more and more variable and important 
become the extremely changeable mental traits, instead of 
the less easily changing somatic traits; these mental traits 
cannot be completely defined by any measurement, and may 
often be inferred only from the most fugitive observations. 

There is probably no more difficult task than that of 
observing the influence of race, as an isolated factor, in 
any specific phenomenon of human history. The task be- 
comes the more difficult and—at least for our present ways 
and means of investigation—more hopeless, the more we 
advance in history, the more the races mingle, the more 
varied and powerful become the artificial conditions under 
which they live. 

Our race theoreticians regard that which is perhaps the 
most complicated problem in human history as the simple 
and self-evident explanation of this history. The concept 


62 


THE RACES OF MAN 


of race, extremely fluctuating even in the case of animal 
and vegetable organisms, where it is not complicated, is 
regarded by them as a firm basis upon which the entire 
theory and practice of human society may be built up with- 
out hesitation. 


63 


CHAPTER IV 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS BETWEEN THE 
RACES OF MAN 


Wutte the literary and journalistic race theoreticians 
regard the concept of race in the case of man as something 
self-evident, natural scientists are by no means agreed on 
the division of human races, but are obliged to admit that 
everything is in a state of flux. Darwin tells us: 

“Our naturalist would likewise be much disturbed as soon 
as he should discern that the distinctive traits of man are 
extremely variable. . . . We may doubt whether any trait 
may be adduced that is distinctive and constant for a cer- 
tain race.... The form of the skull varies considerably in 
certain races ; likewise every other trait. . . . The races of 
man graduate into each other, independently, in many 
cases, as far as we can judge, of their having intercrossed. 
Man has been studied more thoroughly than any other 
organic being, and yet there is the greatest possible di- 
versity amongst capable judges whether he should be 
classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as 
three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach), 
six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven 
(Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen (Des- 


64 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


moulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or 
sixty-three (Burke).” * 

These words were written half a century ago, but are 
just as applicable today. In their embarrassment, many 
anthropologists finally resort to the device of classifying a 
series of races not by their somatic traits, but by language, 
concerning which Ernst Hackel maintains with a straight 
face that it “is transmitted far more rigidly than the skull 
forms”? 

Of course, the only thing inherited is the ability to 
speak, not the specific language. Language is acquired, 
the earliest and most important teachers being the persons 
among whom the individual grows up when a child, not 
necessarily the parents in every case. Owing to migrations, 
to altered environment, to contacts with strange peoples, 
the ancestral language may be forgotten, and a foreign 
language acquired, while the native pigmentation of hair, 
eyes, skin, the form of the nose, etc., are not lost. Any 
races may, without in any way changing their racial char- 
acter, change their language and, vice versa, the most dif- 
ferent races may appear in succession in a certain region, 
each supplanting the other, and each receiving its language 
from its predecessors. In present-day Greece, practically 
the same Greek language is spoken as two or three thousand 
years ago, and yet, how many races have succeeded each 


1 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, London, 1871, vol. ii, pp. 
225, 226. 
2 Nattirliche Schépfungsgeschichte, 5th ed., p. 602. 


65 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


other in that country! On the other hand, the Irish have 
abandoned their Celtic language in the course of the last 
few centuries, without noticeably changing their “race”. 
If language were a race trait, the Negroes of the United 
States would have to be counted as Anglo-Saxons, and 
many Negroes and Indians of Central and South America 
as Latins. In fact, some Negroes would also have to be 
classified as Germans. A German scientist was much sur- 
prised to encounter, in°the primeval Brazilian forest, a 
Negro who spoke Low German. His master was a colonist 
who had immigrated to Brazil from the Waterkant, a part 
of Germany where Low German is spoken. 

As a matter of fact, language is even less an indication 
of race than skin, hair, or head-form. ‘There is no Semitic 
race, there is no Aryan race. The Aryan race is not a 
primitive race, but merely an “invention of the closeted 
scholar.” * 

This does not mean that language may not be of great 
importance in defining the groups of mankind. Language 
is their means of communication, of social cooperation. 
When men speak the same language, it is easy for them to 
live and work together. When brought together by the 
material conditions of life and labour, they must seek to 
make themselves understood by each other by means of a 
common language. ‘Thus, language is in a state of con- 
stant and close interaction with the compass of this social 


grouping of men; it becomes one of the most important 


3 Dr. E. Houzé, L’Aryen et Vanthropologie, Brussels, 1906, p. 33. 
66 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


means of uniting and segregating men; and the study of 
old linguistic survivals may at times help us in recon- 
structing the history of social groupings in periods that 
afford no other evidence on this point. It is no doubt justi- 
fiable to divide mankind according to language groups, but 
this division by no means coincides with the division ac- 
cording to race. Originally, while each race of man repre- 
sented a geographical race, a human group inhabiting 
certain regions for many thousands of years, under like 
conditions, each race may also have developed a type of 
language peculiar to itself, a language dividing off into 
many dialects. A common language tree points in the first 
place to a former common home, and to the common life 
conditions of this home, and, in very primitive peoples, 
to membership in the same geographical race. But there is 
probably not a single tribe today that inhabits the prim- 
itive seats in which the language now spoken by this tribe 
was formed, without any mixture with other tribes. The 
more varied its wanderings, its mingling with other races, 
its historical destinies, the more will language and race 
become independent of each other. And, as the means of 
intercourse grow, as the groups of men become larger and 
larger who are united by their economy in permanent social 
cooperation, the sooner will very different races and race 
mixtures be embraced in a single linguistic and cultural 
group. On the other hand, this same increase in the means 
of intercourse, as the members of the same race are drawn 
into the most different regions of the earth, attaching them 


67 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


to the most different human communities, must divide many 
races into a number of linguistically different sections, so 
that many descendants of the same race will understand 
each other less and less, will become mentally less and less 
connected with each other. 

Language as a race trait is therefore of no value. 

And modern anthropologists are of quite different opin- 
ion on the matter of race from those “anthropo-sociol- 
ogists” who term themselves thus because they know as 
little of anthropology as of sociology. Professor Felix 
von Luschan, of Berlin, presented a very interesting out- 
line of the “anthropological view of race” at the First 
General Racial Congress held in London in 1911. We are 
giving his remarks in some detail, including those in which 
excellent light is thrown upon the pseudo-scientific race- 
conceit of our colonial fanatics of the Rohrbach type. 
Luschan said, among other things: 

“Coloured people are often described as savage races, 
but it is comparatively rare to find any attempts to give a 
proper definition of coloured and savage. 

““A certain order issued by a European governor in 
Africa once stated what Negroes, Arabs, Hindus, Portu- 
guese, Greeks, and other coloured people had to do on 
meeting a white man, and in the German Reichstag one of 
the successors of Bismarck once spoke of the Samoans as 
a ‘handful of savages’. Again, many books have been writ- 
ten on the differences between races of men, and serious 
scientists have tried in vain to draw up an exact definition 


68 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


of what really constitutes the difference between savage 
and civilised races. It is very easy to speak of ‘Greeks 
and other coloured people’; but some assign the ancient 
Greeks to the civilised races, and are so severe in their 
division as to exclude from that group the ancient Romans 
as half-barbarians. 

“The division of mankind into active and passive races 
is an old one. Since then an attempt was made to put 
‘twilight? races between the ‘day’ races and the ‘night’ 
races, and the Japanese were included in this group of 
Dammerungsmenschen,—the Japanese, who are now in the 
van of human civilisation in Asia, and who have, perhaps, 
saved the mental freedom of Europe at Tsushima and on 
the battlefields of Manchuria. 

“Still weaker and more objectionable is the division as to 
colour. We now know that colour of hair and skin is only 
the effect of environment, and that we are fair only because 
our ancestors lived for thousands, or probably tens of 
thousands, of years in sunless and foggy countries. Fair- 
ness is nothing else but lack of pigment, and our ancestors 
lost part of their pigment because they did not need it. 
Just as the Proteus sanguineus and certain beetles became 
blind in caves, where their eyes were useless, so we poor fair 
people have to wear dark glasses and gloves when walking 
on a glacier, and get our skin burned when we expose it 
unduly to the light of the sun. 

“It is therefore only natural that certain Indian races 
and the Singhalese are dark; but it would be absurd to call 


69 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


them ‘savage’ on that account, as they have an ancient 
civilisation, and had a noble and refined religion at a time 
when our own ancestors had a very low standard of life.” * 

With the aid of many examples, Luschan then shows that 
the alleged inferiority of savages is in many cases only an 
apparent inferiority, the proofs adduced in favour of this 
inferiority being often merely a consequence of the sim- 
plicity and impatience of their observers, who inferred the 
absence of intelligence where intelligence was absent only 
from the observers. Luschan continues, in the same paper 
from which we have already quoted: 

“In former times it was not so much the mental and 
material culture of foreign races as their anatomical 
qualities, which were taken as the starting point, in show- 
ing their inferiority. Especially in America, before the 
Civil War, anthropology (or what they called by that 
name) was engaged in showing that the Negro, with his 
black skin, his prognathism, his blubber-lips and his short 
and broad nose, was no real human being but a domestic 
animal. How to treat him was the owner’s private affair; 
it was nobody else’s business, any more than the treatment 
of his cattle or horses. 

“Even today there are scientists who claim a separate 
origin for the various human types, and who link one 
palxolithic race to the Gorilla and another to the Orang. 


4 Anthropological View of Race, reprinted in Papers on Inter-racial 
Problems, Communicated to the First Universal Races Congress, held 
at the University of London, July 26-29, pp. 18 et seq. 


70 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


The author of Anthropozoon biblicum goes still further 
and wants us to believe that the dark races are the de- 
scendants of incestuous intercourse between ‘Aryans’ and 
monkeys. But the great majority of our modern au- 
thorities now claim a monogenetic origin for all of man- 
kind. 

**So the question of the number of human races has quite 
lost its raison d’étre, and has become a subject rather of 
philosophical speculation than of scientific research. It 
is of no more importance now to know how many human 
races there are than to know how many angels can dance 
on the point of a needle. Our aim now is to find out how 
ancient and primitive races developed from others, and 
how races have changed or evolved through migration or 
interbreeding. 

“We do not yet know where the first man began to de- 
velop from earlier stages of zoological existence. . . . We 
shall probably not be far from the truth if we say that the 
paleolithic man of Europe was not essentially different 
from the modern Australian. If we are allowed to draw 
conclusions as to the soft parts from the parts of the 
skeleton, our paleolithic ancestor had dark skin, dark 
eyes, and dark, more or less, straight hair. His home 
was probably in some part of Southern Asia; but we find 
similar types even now among the Toala of Celebes and the 
Veddas of Ceylon. In fact, millions of dark men in India 
belong to the same stock, and so do all the dark tribes of 
Afghanistan and Beluchistan. 


ri 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


‘So we can trace an early and primitive type of mankind 
from Gibraltar, Moustier, Spy, Neandertal, Kropina, etc., 
to Ceylon, Celebes, and Australia. This certainly is a wide 
area, but every year is now bringing fresh proofs of this 
direct continuity of a distinct human type from the earliest 
paleolithic ages to modern times. 

“The question naturally arises how it is that our Aus- 
tralian brothers have remained for fifty or a hundred 
thousand years, or longer, in such a primitive state of 
mental and material culture, while we Europeans have 
reached the height of modern civilisation. ‘The answer is 
not difficult. Australia was isolated from the rest of the 
world through an early geological catastrophe soon after 
the immigration of paleolithic man. Every impulse and 
incentive from without ceased, and human life began to 
petrify. 

“It was quite otherwise in Europe and in Western Asia. 
The thousand advantages of the environment, the broken 
coastlines, the many islands, the navigable rivers, and espe- 
cially the constant passing from Asia to Europe and from 
Europe to Asia and Africa, the ready exchange of inven- 
tions and discoveries and acquisitions, the incessant trade 
and traffic, have made us what we are. 

‘This primitive but uniform human type began to change 
chiefly in two directions. ‘To the southwest of the line 
connecting Gibraltar with Australia, man, in some way or 
other, developed curly and woolly hair, and so became 
what we now call Protonigritian. We find his descendants 


12 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


in Melanesia and in Africa. The Pygmies form a very old 
branch of this protonigritic group. .. . 

“On the other side of this line, in Northern Asia, prim- 
itive man acquired, during many thousands of years, 
straight hair and a shorter or broader skull. The modern 
Chinese, and the typical, now nearly extinct, American 
Indians, are at the end of this northeastern line of develop- 
ment, while the typical Negro represents the southwestern 
end. 

“We have thus three chief varieties of mankind—the old 
Indo-European, the African, and the East-Asiatic, all 
branching off from the same primitive stock, diverging 
from each other for thousands, perhaps hundreds of thou- 
sands, of years, but all these forming a complete unity, 
intermarrying in all directions without the slightest de- 
crease in fertility. ! 

“From these three varieties came all the different types 
of modern mankind, generally by local isolation. A very 
interesting example of such mutation is found in the 
earliest known inhabitants of Western Asia. This is the 
land of those extremely narrow and high-arched noses, we 
generally call Jewish or even Semitic. These remarkable 
noses, however, do not belong to the Semitic invaders, of 
whom Abraham is the eponymic hero, but to the pre- 
Semitic population which might be called Hittite or 
Armenoid, as the modern Armenians are their direct de- 
scendants. 

“These old Hittites or Armenoids emigrated in very 


73 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


early times to Europe, where the ‘Alpine Race’ descended 
from them. In the most out-of-the-way valleys of Savoy, 
Graubiinden, Tyrol, and Carinthia, more than half of the 
population has the head-form and the nose of this second 
immigration from Asia to Europe, and from the mingling 
of this short-headed ‘Alpine Race’ with the descendants 
of the long-headed Paleolithic or Neanderthal or proto- 
Australian Race, all the great modern European races have 
sprung. va. ( 

“While the first varieties of primitive man were certainly 
formed and fixed by long isolation, later variations were 
caused by migration and colonisation. . 

“In former times ethnologists used to admire the ap- 
parent unity in the direction of the human mind, and to 
wonder how it was that in all parts of the earth men had 
similar ideas and ways. Now this Vélkergedanken theory 
is nearly abandoned, and we are forced to admit the real 
unity of mankind. Fair and dark races, long- and short- 
headed, intelligent and primitive, all come from one stock. 
Favourable circumstances and surroundings, especially a 
good environment, a favourable geographical position, 
trade and traffic, caused one group to advance more quickly 
than another, while some groups have remained in a very 
primitive state of development, but all are adapted to their 
surroundings, according to the law of the survival of the 
fittest.” 

This mode of thought can hardly be better characterised 
than in the words of Luschan, and we have therefore given 


74 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


them in full. Essentially, this is the attitude of all of 
modern anthropology; of course, the various scientists 
differ considerably as to matters of detail, but this does not 
alter their essential agreement. 

But we shall not take up this subject here. The im- 
portant point is that modern anthropology does not con- 
sider differences of race to be an impassible gulf. The 
races are in a state of constant flux and transition, all 
are of the same origin in the long run; none of the dominant 
races may boast that its present superiority is based on 
its blood and is immutable so long as the race preserves 
its purity. We may not maintain that any of the sub- 
ject races owes its servitude to a natural immutable in- 
feriority. The superiority of one group is to be ascribed 
only to favourable circumstances in the environment, the 
backwardness of the other group to unfavourable circum- 
stances. We may say of any race that under the same 
favourable circumstances it will accomplish as much as 
the highest races—not necessarily, however, at once. The 
Teutons mentioned by Tacitus lived about one hundred and 
fifty years after those mentioned by Cesar, and seem to 
have remained just as barbarous as the latter. Fully ten 
centuries were required, after the Teutonic migrations, 
before society again attained the level of the defunct Greco- 
Roman civilisation, and further centuries have intervened 
before the attainment of our present level of civilisation. 
It is sometimes carelessly denied that Negroes have any 
cultural aptitude because in the United States, in the 


75 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


sixty years that have elapsed since their liberation, they 
have not yet so far emerged from the state of barbarism 
in which they had lived before their liberation, as to pro- 
duce a Darwin or a Kant. And yet, the Negroes in the 
United States are methodically kept in a state of the 
greatest ignorance, having great difficulty even in obtain- 
ing such necessary and “inalienable” rights as the most 
rudimentary schooling. 

Only a few years after the liberation of the Negroes, 
Hackel considered it his privilege to write: “The wlotriches 
(woolly-haired) are incapable of any true inner culture or 
of a higher mental training, even under such favourable 
(?) conditions of adaptation as have now been offered 
them in the United States of America.” ° 

A fine view for an “evolutionist” to hold! Truly, Hiackel 
has no ground for this view, which is being relinquished 
more and more by anthropologists, except where the de- 
mands of a “scientific” pretext for a colonial policy revive 
such prejudices. 

One thing is no doubt true: the leading races of modern 
civilisation have advanced with such immense rapidity in 
the last few centuries, particularly in their technology, that 
their lead has become more and more extensive, leaving 
the backward peoples farther and farther behind along 
the path the latter must follow in order to attain the 
level of the civilised races. But this by no means signifies 
that the backward peoples will and must continue to re- 

5 Ernst Hickel, Natitirliche Schipfungsgeschichte, 5th ed., p. 603. 


76 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


main backward. ‘The rapid progress of the European 
nations since the Sixteenth Century was due only to an 
expansion of trade which brought all the races and peoples 
of the earth into the closest contact with each other. The 
first effect of this process was to destroy the weakest 
races, for modern society is based on brutal hostilities of 
interests: it destroyed them body and soul. Some were 
exterminated, forced down into the status of domestic 
animals and doomed to the stupidity of the latter—tike 
the present condition of the European proletarians. But 
this tendency did not everywhere have a permanently de- 
grading effect. As in the case of all the more energetic 
strata of the proletariat, there will also come a time for 
the more energetic of the backward races subjugated by 
capitalism, when their degradation will lead them to rebel 
against this degradation and thus proceed along an up- 
ward course. This rise can only be accomplished by tak- 
ing possession of the mental and material weapons by 
which the ‘“‘master races” have created their dominant 
position. The handicap of the dominant capitalist na- 
tions is too great for any one of the oppressed nations to 
believe that they may overcome it by self-devised means. 
They hasten to follow the lead of the “more civilised” and 
are gradually catching up with them by means of the 
processes devised and prepared by the leading nations 
themselves. The backward nations are spared the neces- 
sity of this labour of seeking and trail-blazing, and they 
may thus accomplish in a few decades that which required 


ue 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


many centuries on the part of the leading nations. Of 
course, in order to achieve this, they must relinquish their 
originality, their original native traits, their spiritual inde- 
pendence. 

Man’s teeth have suffered owing to the cooking and the 
artificial dividing of foodstuffs. His memory has very 
probably suffered owing to his use of writing and print- 
ing. Similarly, the inventive spirit of the backward peo- 
ples is probably being much weakened by their acquisition 
of so many superior inventions ready-made, requiring the 
use of their full mental powers to absorb them. The 
greater half of mankind is transformed from intelligently 
investigating creatures into imitative creatures, into mere 
pupils of superior teachers. 

But this also is merely a transient stage, from which 
each people emerges as soon as it has attained the level 
of modern civilisation, after which it begins to partake 
actively in this civilisation. , 

The permanent result of this process of development 
must finally be a mental similarity of the human race, on 
the basis of this civilisation, in which the already very 
variable and indefinite mental race traits will be far more 
quickly eradicated than bodily traits, in order to be ab- 
sorbed in a new body of traits, within which other, greater, 
individual differences will arise. ‘Types disappear, indi- 
vidualities grow. The point of departure in human evolu- 
tion was probably a uniform human race. This race is 
divided into an increasing number of races, which is now 


78 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


again forming a new community of the human race, but 
a community of a different kind. Ratzel, in his An- 
thropogeographie, has already mentioned this process, 
which, like his “negation” and his “negation of negation’, 
is a dialectic process resembling that expounded by Marx 
in Capital, there ending with the expropriation of the ex- 
propriators. Ratzel’s words, taken from the book above 
mentioned, are as follows: 

“The similarity of species in present-day mankind is of 
far different origin than the similarities between the various 
animal and plant species. The latter similarities are caused 
by a more and more emphatic development of specific traits 
in a certain definite direction, while mankind has become 
more and more a unit—and will become even more so— 
by the combination of its formerly far diverging groups. 
These two groups of similarities have therefore come into 
being by entirely different paths, the former by segregation, 
the latter by conjoining and combining. Therefore the 
former are more limited in area, while the latter embrace 
the entire earth. And therefore these similarities are of 
different character also. The closed system of animal and 
plant species may be contrasted with the varied character 
of the branches of mankind, which are based on a great 
mass of reduced or attenuated differences which, however, 
. tend more and more to combine, tc make mankind a more 
unified mass. Present-day humanity may be conceived as 
standing, in time, midway between a humanity of the past, 
with greater internal differences, perhaps even differences 


79 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


of species, and a humanity of the future, with much smaller 
internal differences.” ° 

Ratzel is here concerned chiefly with the effects of race 
mixture. Like most anthropologists, he does not pay sufli- 
cient attention to the economic factor. But he is well 
aware of the tendency of evolution, and also of the dif- 
ferences between the race development of animals and that 
of historical man. The future belongs not to a separation 
of races into exploiting and exploited, or—as it is some- 
times put more euphemistically—into active and passive, 
into day races and night races, but to a dissolving of races 
in a single human race. The first step in this direction 
will be a mental combination, an economic equality, from 
which there must result an increasing “toning down or at- 
tenuation of differences”—even though esthetes may turn 
up their noses at this possibility. 

Of course, Werner Sombart is one of these esthetes. He 
considers it imperative to maintain the race differences 
existing between men, for: “Who would want to miss the 
racy Judiths and Miriams? To be sure, they must be racy 
and ready to remain so. We cannot tolerate this black- 


blond mix-up.” 7 


And since * 


we” do not desire any diminution of race 
traits, the historical process will respectfully refrain from 
touching them. In this connection, Sombart had already 
forgotten in 1912 what he was still aware of in 1911, 


6 Vol. ii, p. 585. 
7 Die Zukunft der Juden, Leipzig, 1912, p. 72. 


80 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


namely, “That when I say: this woman is racy (has class), 
this does not mean the same as when I say: this person be- 
longs to the Mongolian race.” ® 

Anthropologists and scientific students in general speak 
of the Mongolian race; but the concept of a “racy”? woman 
is born in those learned circles whose chief interest cen- 
tres about horses and women of a certain class, to whom 
it transfers the jargon of the stable. 

In spite of all these esthetic individuals, the attenuation 
of the races can hardly be retarded. Capitalism is working 
with all its might in this development and thus preparing 
a higher form of society by this means also. To socialism 
falls the task of strengthening the oppressed and disin- 
herited against the exploitation of capitalism, of leading 
them to the victory, in other words, of making them not 
only superior in strength to their exploiters, but also of 
making them their superiors or at least their equals in 
mental maturity. 

The result of all this conflict and struggle between the 
capitalists and the proletarians of the advanced nations 
and the rebellious strata of the backward nations, is not 
only the international solidarity of the proletariat of the 
civilised nations, but—in the last analysis—the interna- 
tional unity of the entire human race in thought and knowl- 
edge, in investigation and aspirations. 

Finally we shall behold the realisation of the dictum first 
uttered as an ideal of the thinkers and pioneers of the 

8 Die Juden und das Wirischaftsleben, Leipzig, 1911, p. 349. 


81 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


revolutionary bourgeoisie, the dictum adopted ready-made 
by the revolutionary proletariat: 


Alle Menschen, gleich geboren, 
Sind em adliges Geschlecht. 


This aspiration might still have been considered chimerical 
some years ago. But in the meantime, the victories of 
the Japanese over Russia have revealed to all the world 
the extent to which Asia has been revolutionised by cap- 
italism and by the uprisings of its nations. These nations, 
of whom it was once assumed that their conservative ad- 
herence to the traditional forms of life was of their very 
essence—of the marrow of their bones, as it were, a perma- 
nent race trait—have now become a revolutionary element 
in world history. 

Not only the victory of the proletariat of the white 
races, but also the liberation of the “coloured” races, is 
only a question of time. 

But is not this struggle for liberation a race struggle? 
Is it not a portion of the uninterrupted struggle of the 
races which has been going on from time immemorial and 
which must continue to be waged because the struggle 
for existence is a natural necessity? 

We have seen that the struggle for existence in the animal 
world is almost exclusively a struggle against surrounding 
nature, not against individuals of the same species. In 


nature, this struggle—as a rule—is not even a struggle 


82 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


between different varieties of the same species. For these 
varieties are geographical in their origin, each having its 
special territory, within which it lives in a condition of 
equilibrium, and which it does not leave unless this equilib- 
rium is disturbed, an event therefore traceable to geological 
eras. 

In the case of man the situation changes. Man’s tech- 
nology destroys the equilibrium in nature and also the 
equilibrium in his own ranks. In many regions we now 
find overpopulation ensuing, combined with a struggle for 
food resources. But this is not a struggle of race against 
race, but rather at first a struggle waged by the horde 
against a neighbouring horde which seeks to displace it, 
when all sources of food have been cut off. This cannot 
be called a race struggle, but a struggle within the race. 
The hordes and tribes were far too small to enable us to 
consider any single one of them as an entire race; each was 
but a portion of the same race. 

If this condition of overpopulation continues, the move- 
ment will probably involve all the tribes of a certain region, 
some of whom must immigrate. These may advance so 
far as to come into hostile contact with hordes or tribes 
of another race, but the struggle with these groups is at 
bottom no different from that within the same race. At 
most, the foreign appearance of the opponent may ac- 
centuate the ruthlessness of the struggle and the complete- 
ness of the victory. But even here the differences in 


language and culture, making a mutual understanding dif- 


83 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


ficult, are of greater effect than the differences in race 
traits. 

As civilisation advances, the social groups develop 
into states and nations; but even these are by no means 
synonymous with races. We have the simultaneous de- 
velopment of the differences between classes and of the 
oppositions between exploiters and exploited. ‘These op- 
positions are a determining element not only in the internal, 
but also in the external politics of states. The exploiters 
seek to increase the number of those exploited by them, 
in order to increase the profits of exploitation, either by 
seizures of men, by slavery, or by the conquest of new 
regions and by the subjection of their inhabitants. ‘The 
cause for war is no longer overpopulation, but exploita- 
tion: struggles between exploiters and exploited, or be- 
tween the exploiters among themselves for the ownership 
of an exploited community. 

The deep roots of these struggles are not to be found 
in the differences of race, but in the social conditions. It 
is possible that the opposing groups of those interested 
may be of different races, but this is by no means the 
rule, for it is self-evident that the first persons with whom 
one comes in contact either as exploiter or as one ex- 
ploited are one’s own neighbours. It was quite a common 
thing to find Greek and Italian slaves among the ancient 
Athenians and Romans, while Negro slaves were practically 
unknown. The relation of exploitation, the opposition of 
interests, does not arise from differences of race, which 


84 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


may only serve as a contributing cause for rendering the 
expressions of this opposition more brutal. 

EKiven in cases where opposing interested groups belong 
to different races and, differing even in their external ear- 
marks, are brought into savage opposition to each other, 
we never find a race unified in its conflict with another. 
We are always dealing with individual groups, each of 
_ which may enter into the most varied combinations with 
other groups either of its own race or of another race. 

Many of the Negro slaves brought by white traders to 
America had formerly been the slaves of other Negroes 
who had sold them to the whites. 

The struggle between Indians and “palefaces” in North 
America may appear to have been a race struggle. But the 
whites, after their arrival in America, did not act as rep- 
resentatives of one and the same race, cooperating with 
each other, but as the representatives of different states, 
fighting each other bitterly. In this struggle, each sought 
and obtained the assistance of Indian tribes. During the 
entire Eighteenth Century, we find whites struggling against 
whites in America; Frenchmen against Englishmen, later 
American colonials against Englishmen, and Indians against 
Indians. And where we find Indians fighting the whites, 
they were often acting on the instigation of other whites. 

But it is sufficient to consider our own epoch, in which 
the conception of the race struggle plays such an impor- 
tant part, to reveal the emptiness and ridiculousness of this 
phrase. 


85 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


We are told that the “race” of the Teutons is destined 
by nature for a life-and-death struggle with the “race” 
of the Slavs and the Romance races. It was found neces- 
sary to increase the German army because the Balkan 
War had disturbed the equilibrium between Teutons and 
Slavs and Austria was now threatened by the Southern 
Slavs. But it was not the race of the Teutons that had 
come into hostile contact with the Europeans, but the 
more or less impure race of landed proprietors (agra- 
rians), particularly the Hungarian, Polish and Bohemian 
junkers, who cared mighty little about the Teutonic race! 

But simultaneously the Teutons of Germany, in order 
to wage the “race” struggle against the Latins of France, 
allied themselves with the Latins of Italy. For a time, 
our Teutons also aimed to obtain the friendship of the 
Teutonic race in England; then, “blood was thicker than 
water”. But later, the English Teutons wickedly sought 
an entente with Russia, the home of the Slavic race, and 
with the principal Romance race, France, in order to op- 
pose their Teutonic blood-kindred in Germany! 

Like the “Aryan” and “Semitic”, the Teutonic or the 
Slavic race, the race struggle itself is an invention of the 
brains of schoolmasters, rejected by serious scholars. 

This was the case even before the World War, which 
forced the German Government to seek the aid of the 
Turks and of the entire Mohammedan world, while, during 
the war, France and England, and later America, sent 
coloured regiments against their white enemies. This 


86 


DIFFERENCES AND OPPOSITIONS 


would appear to be a peculiar phase of the race struggle. 
Eduard Meyer once said concerning this struggle: 
“While the differences in somatic structure, and par- 
ticularly of skin pigment, have always been obvious, they 
have never had any effect on the relations between nations 
except where these sharp distinctions involved not only 
mere external appearance, but also—and particularly— 
a difference in the cultural aptitude and the mode of 
thought, as between Europeans and Negroes. In this 
field also, it was reserved for our time to assign an inner 
significance to the external contrast, and many theories, 
in their far-fetched application, have ascribed to the factor 
of race a significance which it never possessed and which 
is in direct contradiction with all the experiences of history. 
“The popular notion that the hostility to the Jews (‘anti- 
Semitism’) is a race hostility, or that it has anything to 
do with race, is completely erroneous; we find this hostility 
among the closest of kin to the Jews, as well as among 
the Europeans. It is generally known that the importance 
of race is hardly dreamed of in the Orient and that even 
the aversion for the Negro is found fully developed only 
among the Teutonic (English) tribes.” ° 
There is surely nothing more absurd than the theory 
of the “natural” hostility between races, but unfortunately 
it is not one of the theories that may be killed by laughing 
at it. It arises from interests that are too strong, it serves 
too well the purpose of facilitating the demagogic exploita- 
9 Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, I, 1, 8rd ed., 1910, p. 77. 


87 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


tion of ancient prejudices and errors on the subject of 
foreign phenomena, to prevent this absurd creature of the 
overheated pedantic brain to be considered in editorial 
offices and on the parliamentary rostrum, by professional 
patriots as a recognised science, as a self-evident truth, im- 
parting to it ever new accessions of vitality. 


88 


CHAPTER V 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE 
JEWISH RACE 


We have seen that the traits derived from the primitive 
races of man tend more and more to disappear, as the 
economic evolution progresses. Race mixtures and a con- 
stant transformation in the economic conditions are cease- 
lessly at work on the creation of new types, again subject 
to progressive change, in part to new differentiations, in 
part to new combinations, causing a continual weakening 
of the definiteness and permanence of races, and also bring- 
ing about more and more variety in individual differentia- 
tion. ‘The process of history is not a continuous struggle 
between immutable races, but a process of uninterrupted 
alteration in the economic environment, of constant change 
in the groups of interests struggling with each other, re- 
sulting in a constant mutation in the traditional race traits 
as determined by the original state of nature. Race, mean- 
ing the races of animals—wild animals as well as domestic 
animals—becomes more and more vague among men, de- 
parting further and further from the divisions of men into 
states and languages, as developed in the course of his- 
torical evolution. 


89 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


It may therefore be assumed in advance, in the case of 
a group of humans that have marched for tens of centuries 
in the front rank of the process of economic evolution, that 
have undergone the most extensive migrations, economic 
and political revolutions, that there is no possibility that 
such a race may be a unit or a pure race. 

But we are told this statement does not apply to the 
Jews. It is claimed, again and again, that the Jewish 
race has maintained itself in all its purity since time 1m- 
memorial, and this alleged permanence of the Jewish racial 
type has become one of the most frequently utilised bases 
of the views of race theory among the anthropo-sociologists. 

A full century ago, Blumenbach wrote: “It is generally 
known that the Jewish race has been spread for many 
centuries over all the earth; it has nevertheless maintained 
its racial traits pure and even typical. This remarkable 
fact has long been receiving the attention of scientists and 
physiologists.” 

The well-known anthropologist, Richard Andree, de- 
clared: 

“Anthropologically considered, the Jews are one of the 
most interesting subjects. For no other race type can be 
traced back through tens of centuries with the same cer- 
tainty as the Jews, and no other race type presents such 
permanent forms, no other has so well resisted the influence 
of time and the influence of its environment.” * 

This view is widely accepted to this day as an irrefutable 

1 Quoted by Fishberg, p. 9. 


90 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


and unquestionable fact, a fact which is so irrefutable and 
unquestionable that its advocate forgets to state what are 
the appallingly constant and immutable traits of the Jew- 
ish race. The race theorists usually hand over this scien- 
tific task to the cartoonists of the comic papers. 

These most dependable scholars have found the principal 
trait of Judaism in its nose. The comic papers picture no 
Jew without the Jewish nose. But what is the state of 
affairs outside of the comic papers? 

Fishberg states: 

“The present author has investigated the subject among 
Jews in New York City and also in the various countries 
east and west of Europe, in North Africa, and Jewish im- 
migrants of various countries in Asia. The results of 
these investigations do not bear out the popular notion that 
the hooked nose is to be considered the ‘Jewish’ nose, be- 
cause only a small minority of Jews have the privilege of 
possessing this kind of nose. Among 2,836 adult male Jews 
in New York City, the percentage of noses was as follows: 


ptraightor, Grecky curve se sten lee eae 57.26% 
etrousse. Of, SNUD SL erie oe side eas 22.07% 
BAMIUIN GOL ALOOKEOM ie oad gh pte ste ts 14.25% 
BTAUBANC TOA cio ies ine sere state een Maree 6.42% 


Among 1,284 Jewesses, the percentage of straight noses 
was even higher, and of aquiline and hooked noses even 
smaller than among the men: 


91 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


Straight or, Greek ivcenc ee iy nee 59.42% 
Retroussé, or Snubis i. aire poids orate 13.86% 
Aquiline, or Hooked 4.2... 3% 5/2 ens vei 12.70% 
Blati and: Broad ):2\s.cpcircae bie Wee 14.02%” ” 


But a small portion of the Jews, therefore—thirteen or 
fourteen per cent.—have the Jewish nose! 

Fishberg is not the only investigator who has found this 
percentage so low. Other scholars working in Russia 
and Austria have arrived at the same result. 

On the other hand, we find that the aquiline nose is by 
no means possessed by Jews only. It is quite common in 
Western Asia, on the Mediterranean Sea, as well as among 
American Indians. We have already quoted Luschan’s 
observation that the Jewish nose is particularly frequent 
in the Alpine valleys that are cut off from all outside in- 
fluences, that it is an earmark of the homo alpinus, the 
Alpine man. While but thirteen or fourteen per cent. of the 
Jews have a Jewish nose—as a rule—the conservative 
Catholic population of Ancient Bavaria* shows thirty-one 
per cent. of Jewish noses. 

A further observation of Fishberg’s is very interesting: 
the forms of noses found among Jews have a tendency to 
vary with the forms of noses in the environment in which. 
they live. 

“Tt is noteworthy that Bavarian Jews also have a higher 


2 Fishberg, p. 79. 
* Altbayern, former designation for the Bavarian provinces of 
Upper and Lower Bavaria.—Transtaror. 


92 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


proportion of hooked noses than their co-religionists in 
other countries.” * 

Wide noses are found more frequently among the Jews 
of Northern Africa than among those of Eastern Europe. 
But the snub nose, on the other hand, among Jews, is most 
numerous among those living in the midst of a Slavic 
population, where this type of nose, as is well known, is very 
frequent. 

If we are obliged to relinquish the Jewish nose, we are 
giving up- the most widely recognised race trait of the 
Jews. What other such traits do we still have? Skin 
pigmentation, eye pigmentation, hair pigmentation? These 
are often mentioned as race traits, but if we are to con- 
sider black hair, dark eyes, swarthy or sallow skin as 
particular traits of the Jews, we should have to regard 
as Jews all Europeans that are not blond. 

Furthermore, there are blond and blue-eyed persons 
among the Jews. Among 4,235 Jews examined by Fish- 
berg in New York, the following were the proportions: 


Jews J ewesses 
Brunette Type ....... 52.62% 56.94% 
long ype wens ai. eee 10.42% 10.27% 
Bixed UL UDES Gace vac 36.96% 32.79% 


“The brunette type, which is considered characteristic 
of the Jews from time immemorial, is thus reduced to only 
fifty-two per cent. among the European representatives of 

3 Fishberg, p. 83. 

93 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


the race, while among the Jewesses it is not much larger, 
fifty-seven per cent.” * 

But the blond Jew is not equally numerous everywhere: 

“On the whole, it can be stated that most of the blond 
Jews are found in countries where the general population 
has a considerable proportion of blonds. ‘This is exem- 
plified by the number of blond Jews in England, twenty- 
five per cent., and in Germany, where over thirty per cent. 
of Jewish children had blond hair. On the other hand, in 
Italy, where the Christian population is distinctly brunette, 
less than five per cent. of the Jews are blond, while in 
Algeria, Bokhara, the Caucasus, etc., the percentage is 


even less.” ® 


We have still to consider the skull. The skull is said to 
be an unchanging race trait. Where the race has been pre- 
served in its purity, the skull, according to many anthro- 
pologists, will not change, while others dispute this condi- 
tion. This is not the place to attempt the solution of 
such controversies. Assuming that the form of the skull 
is the decisive factor, by which we mean whether the form 
of the skull, as: viewed from above, shows a greater or 
less ratio between length and breadth, what are the results 
that may be said to have been determined by skull measure- 
ments? 

“It may, in fact, be stated that there is no single type 
of head which is found among the Jews of all countries in 


4 Fishberg, p. 66. 
5 Fishberg, p. 70. 


94 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


which they live. Indeed nearly all varieties of skulls are 
met with among Jews of today.” ° 

The head-forms of the Jews in various countries are 
quite different from each other. The condition is as fol- 


lows: 





Daghestan, Jews in North Yemen, 

Caucasus Europe Africa Arabia 
Hyperdolichocephalic (—76)..  .... 2.89% 25.97% 71.80% 
Dolichocephalic (76-77) ...... ara 7.36 24.67 14.10 
Subdolichocephalic (78-79).... 4.70% 15.51 19.48 7.69 
Mesocephalic (80-81) ........ 6.10 25.78 13.00 2.56 
Subbrachycephalic (82-83) ... 17.37 24.01 9.09 3.85 
Brachycephalic (84-85) ....... 23.94 15.97 6.49 
Hyperbrachycephalic (86+)... 47.89 8.47 1.80 
Number of Observations ...... 213 2,641 77 78 7 


The Jews in the Caucasus are therefore predominantly 
brachycephalic, while those in Northern Africa, and par- 
ticularly those in Arabia, are predominantly dolicho- 
cephalic, and those in Europe predominantly of medium 
types. 

Fishberg therefore rightly observes: 

‘““As far as head-form is concerned, these three groups 
of Jews represent three different races as clearly as if they 
were of white, black, and yellow skin.” ° 


6 Fishberg, p. 49. 

7 These figures (the cephalic index) indicate the width of the skull 
expressed as a percentage of its length. For instance, if the skull 
length is 200 mm., and its width 160 mm., the cephalic index will be 
80, and the head-form is termed mesocephalic. 

8 P, 38, German ed. 


95 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


Here again, we find the characteristics of the Jews co- 
inciding with those of the nations among which they live. 
The Caucasians among whom they live are brachycephalic. 
In Arabia, Mesopotamia and Northern Africa, the Jews 
are as distinctly dolichocephalic as the races native to 
these regions. European Jews, like the rest of the Euro- 
peans, are midway between these extremes. 

Within Europe itself the cephalic index of Jews and non- 
Jews shows striking coincidences within the same region. 
Thus, Fishberg found the average cephalic indexes in the 
following countries to be: 


ayes Cephalic Index 


Country of Jews of Non-Jews 
Taithnania reise emetic 81.05 81.88 
Rumania Won vias wettest 81.82 82.92 
FLUNG are ale Glace islet 82.45 81.40 
Poland Wena aia Wit eare gets 81.91 82.13 
Tittle i Risser (ashe ate ive 82.45 82.31 
Cralicia Me i a We iL 83.33 84.40 ® 


In general, we find a great uniformity of head forms 
among both Jews and non-Jews in Eastern Europe; there 
is but slight divergence; this condition is attributed by the 
American anthropologist, Ripley, to “the perfect monotony 
and uniformity of environment of the Russian people’’, to 
the unvarying conditions of nature “from the Carpathian 
Mountains, east and north’, 


® Fishberg, p. 52. 
10 Fishberg, p. 51. 


96 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


What becomes now of the so-called immutable, sharply- 
defined race type of the Jews which “may be traced with 
equal certainty through the course of thousands of years’? 
We cannot even find such sharply-defined traits in our 
own day. 

Being unable to prove the existence of the Jewish race 
type by those traits which are generally regarded as racial 
indications, the advocates of the presence of a distinct 
Jewish race are obliged to turn from anthropological to 
physiological traits. The Jew is to be distinguished, they 
say, not by the appearance of his body, but by its posture. 

We are already leaving the ground of comparatively un- 
changing factors and entering the field of very alterable 
factors. Among Jews the chest measurement is declared 
to be strikingly small, menstruation to appear very early 
in life, their fruitfulness is said to attain extremely high 
figures, their adaptability to climate to be extremely great. 
On the whole, these statements appear quite true, but do 
no seem to be “Jewish characteristics” at all, if we take 
the pains to compare the Jews not with the totality of the 
population among whom they live, but with the classes in 
which Jews are most commonly found. It will then be 
found that narrow chests are as common among non-Jews 
who are accustomed——because they are merchants or in- 
tellectuals—to a sedentary mode of life, with little physical 
exercise, and that menstruation, not only among Jewesses, 
but among all city women, appears earlier than among 


country girls. 


97 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


The faculty of acclimatisation in the tropics is pos- 
sessed by the Jew in common with the other Europeans who 
visit those climates as merchants, not as soldiers or heavy 
labourers, and who are able to abstain from alcohol. For 
hard physical exertion and alcohol are the greatest enemy 
of the European in the tropics. We cannot consider the 
Jew’s faculty of acclimatisation as a specific Jewish quality 
unless we assume that alcoholism is one of the immutable 
race traits of the dominant blond race. 

As for their fruitfulness, which has resulted in making 
the Jews as numerous as the grains of sand on the seashore, 
this property also reveals how great is the dependence of 
“immutable race traits” on social conditions. As in all 
other urban populations, the Jewish population of cities 
also presents a distinct decline in the birth rate. This 
fact is well known in the case of Western Europe, but is 
even beginning to be observed in Eastern Europe. In 
Rumania, the rate of living births per thousand inhabitants 
shows the following changes: 


For the Population For the Jews 
Wh Only 


as a ole 
US71L-LS 7 Bure cate et ete 34.2% 46.5% 
1881-1 SSO mem are 41.3% 46.8% 
TQOTA1L OOS ee eines 89.5% 32.6% 11 


The birth rate of the Jews was considerably higher than 
that of the entire population thirty years ago, but is now 
considerably lower. 


11 Fishberg, German ed., p. 229. 
| 98 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


In Western Europe and America the fruitfulness of the 
Jews is decreasing as rapidly as the general fruitfulness of 
the population of France. In fact, if the present tendency 
continues, it will actually mean the dying out of the Jews, 
which would be the most original manner of solving the 
entire Jewish question. 

In Prussia, the excess of births over deaths per thou- 
sand of respective population groups was: 


Natural Increase 


Jews hristians 
Up Lad st iP By Ae Aah peas eae Br oP 10.33 12.29 
LS OO Wane ld'e lets, clera ohare alle 7.64 12.58 
DO paaalet stata stot o dias erates aisha 6.66 15.12 
POO aetrarsteve ata eks late tains te sheep 4.52 14.57 
POO aes lehe Ni aie: ou etis sre) Sat ebah aie » 3.34 12.93 
LOO Grin sc atelatalaheyetele a) etece slats 3.33 14.97 1? 


“In certain German cities the birth and death rates of 
the Jews are almost equal; in Breslau in 1906-1907, there 
were registered 507 Jewish births and 694 Jewish deaths. 
Here they do not replenish the earth.” ** 

Interesting figures are communicated by Felix Theilhaber 
in a book entitled Sterile Berlin,** which contains far more 
information than is suggested by the title, being in fact 
a thorough discussion of the entire modern population 
problem. 

12 Fishberg, p. 69. 


13 Fishberg, German ed., p. 60. 
14 Das sterile Berlin, Berlin, 1913. 


99 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


Theilhaber had already issued in 1911 a book bearing 
the ominous title: The Destruction of the German Jews.** 
In the work above mentioned he communicates a number of 
new calculations based on Berlin conditions, referring to 
the relative number of Jewish births in that city: 


Births per 1,000 


sas tol ives Jewish Births ee aed 
ES SO ie a alee tec 13,300 1,497 112 
PS OO Ue mists 3s Bee 22,678 1,694 75 
1900 see eaten 24,531 1,649 67 
LUO Dit es ale sole ka tees 25,491 1,630 64 
1910 approx. .. 24,000 1,806 54 


If the Jewish births are to replace the losses by death, 
there would have to be seventy-eight births per 1,000 Jew- 
ish women of child-bearing age. But with the present birth 
rate, 1,000 Jewish couples, in other words, “2,000 Jews 
of child-producing age, have a total offspring of only 
1,400 persons, equivalent to a dying out of one-third their 
number. If this should continue to be the condition, the 
Jews of Berlin will, after two or three generations—in 
other words, in 80-120 years—be almost extinct.” * 

Of course, we are here ignoring immigration from other 
regions. At any rate, our figures are sufficient to show 
that the “infinite fruitfulness of the Jews” as an “im- 
mutable” race trait is a non-existent quantity. 


15 Der Untergang der deutschen Juden. 
16 Das sterile Berlin, pp. 106-107. 


100 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


Physiology having transpired to be as poor a basis as 
anthropology, pathology is called upon for assistance. 
The race traits which a healthy Jew is incapable of con- 
tributing are now sought in the Jew suffering from disease. 
It is maintained that the Jew is more subject to certain 
diseases than the non-Jew, while he is less subject to others 
than the non-Jew. But here again we are dealing only 
with hasty generalisations. 

Diabetes (sugar), for example, is commonly considered 
a “Jewish sickness”. As a matter of fact, many Jews do 
die of this disease. | 

“From Auerbach’s Analysis of the Demography of the 
Jews in Budapest, it appears that of the 487 deaths re- 
ported as due to diabetes in 1902-07, 288, or more than 
one-half, occurred in Jews, although they only constituted 
22.6 per cent. of the population. The rates were 5.9 
deaths due to diabetes per 100,000 Catholics and 21.4 
per 100,000 Jews.* 

But comparisons of this kind between Jews and non- 
Jews are quite misleading, whether they are concerned with 
diseases or with criminality or with school attendance. We 
know that certain diseases are more common in certain 
vocations and social strata than others. A comparison 
between Jews and non-Jews is legitimate when the non-Jews 
are compared with Jews of those classes to which most of 
the Jews belong. Proceeding in this manner, we shall 
observe that diabetes is a very common complaint among 

17 Fishberg, pp. 297-298. 


101 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


merchants and intellectuals, including non-Jewish mer- 
chants and intellectuals. Accordingly, Fishberg determined 
that diabetes is a specifically Jewish disease only in places 
where the Jews are predominantly in business. In New 
York, German Jews, according to the records of the hos- 
pitals, suffer from diabetes three times as frequently as 
non-Jews. The Russian Jews, on the other hand, most 
of whom are workers, do not show a higher percentage of 
diabetes than that of the population as a whole. Diabetes 
also is, therefore, not a race disease but a class disease. 
On the other hand, it is declared that Jews are not so 
susceptible to certain diseases as non-Jews; such diseases 
are: cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, etc. Where this dec- 
laration agrees with the facts, it may be explained by the 
social conditions of the Jews, who, in Germany, for in- 
stance, are members of the wealthier classes, are less ad- 
dicted to alcohol, and are always more inclined to consult 
a physician at once, while the uneducated masses of the 
people usually regard physicians with mistrust. Even 
the most orthodox, most superstitious Jew will not seek 
to oppose the epidemic by prayers and sacrifices alone, as 
is the custom among the Italian and Russian masses. 
“As a matter of fact, it is well known to every physician 
of experience among the Jews that they are always ready 
to take advantage of every new measure to prevent or 
cure disease. There are practically no anti-vaccinationists 
among them; nor are there any other kind of cranks among 
them to urge them on to resist the attempts on the part 


102 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


of the authorities to vaccinate them. The Jewish clergy 
is always in favour of placing medical matters in the hands 
of physicians and is not in favour of leaving such matters 
in the hands of Providence.” ** 

Shall we consider ignorance among the masses as a race 
trait of the “Aryans”? For the present, we still explain 
such traits by the social and political conditions in which 
the nations live. 

It appears that disease as a race trait also is a poor 
argument. There remains for the advocates of Jewish 
racial purity a single refuge, the last refuge of the race 
theorists who aim to construct races on the basis of the 
modern nations, namely, language. 

Of course, language as a race trait is particularly un- 
reliable in the case of the Jews, more unreliable than in 
any other human group, since the Jews—with the excep- 
tion of the Polish and Russian Jews—everywhere speak 
the language of their environment. Unable to use the 
criterion of language in the case of the Jews, the criterion 
of pronunciation is resorted to. We are told the Jew 
may always be recognised by his pronunciation. In all the 
languages he speaks, the Jew has his Jewish accent. Said 
the famous African explorer, Gerhart Rohlfs: 

“We know that the Jew in Germany can always be 
recognised by his discordant accent. The same is the case 
with the Jews in all European countries... also in 
Northern .Africa.” 


18 Fishberg, p. 128. 
103 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


And Andree says: 

“The so-called Jewish accent (mauscheln) is a Jewish 
race trait, as ineradicable in them as the Jewish type 
itself, . . . This is very decidedly a race trait, since it is 
found among the Jews of all countries.” * 

Richard Wagner’s reasoning to show that the Jew is in- 
capable of producing good music is based on the so-called 
Jewish pronunciation. After pointing out in his essay, 
“The Jews in Music”,” that the physical appearance of 
the Jew always has for us an “unpleasantly foreign quality: 
we involuntarily feel that we desire to have nothing to do 
with a person who has this appearance”, he continues: 

“Far more important—in fact, of decisive importance— 
is the nature of the influence of the Jew’s pronunciation 
upon us; particularly, this is the essential point of de- 
parture in a study of the Jewish influence on music... . 
Particularly repulsive to us is the purely sensual manifesta- 
tion of the Jewish language. Civilisation has not succeeded 
in surmounting the peculiar stubbornness of the Jewish 
character in the matter of the Semitic mode of pronuncia- 
tion, in spite of their two thousand years of contact with 
European nations. Our ear feels the absolutely foreign 
and unpleasant sound of a certain hissing, strident, lisping 
and choking pronunciation in the Jewish speech; a dis- 
tortion and peculiar rearrangement of the words and of 
phrase constructions, entirely foreign to our national lan- 


19 Fishberg, German ed., p. 77. 
20 Das Judentum in der Musik. 


104 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


guage, finally imparts to this pronunciation the character 
of a confused babbling, to listen to which causes our atten- 
tion to dwell rather on this repulsive manner of the Jewish 
speech, than on the substance it conveys. ‘The exceptional 
importance of this circumstance in explaining the impres- 
sion made upon us by the musical works of modern Jews 
must be recognised and emphasised from the outset... . 
If the quality of his mode of speech makes it almost im- 
possible for a Jew to acquire the ability of an artistic ex- 
pression of his feelings and views through speech, his 
capacity for manifesting such moods and thoughts in song 
must be even far inferior, etc.” 

No doubt a Siegfried speaking with a Jewish accent 
would be impossible on the stage. Richard Wagner’s dialect 
was not a Jewish dialect but that of Saxony. If we should 
use Wagner’s arguments, we might say: 

“Civilisation has not succeeded in surmounting the 
peculiar stubbornness of the Saxon character in the matter 
of the Saxon mode of pronunciation, in spite of their two 
thousand years of contact with European nations.” But it 
is not unreasonable to assume that Direktor Striese in The 
Rape of the Sabine Women” would hardly do much better in 
the réle of Siegfried than the well-known Schmock.” Would 


21 Direktor Striese, a character who speaks in the Saxon dialect in 
the farce, Der Raub der Sabinerinnen (1885), by Franz von Schonthan 
(1849-1913) and Paul von Schénthan (1853-1905). 

22 Schmock is a Jewish journalist in Freytag’s (1816-1895) play 
Die Journalisten, who speaks German with exaggerated Jewish man- 
nerisms. 


105 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


it be reasonable to assume that the influence of the Saxons 
on music could not but be disastrous? 

Pronunciation is a most peculiar element in language. 
Grammar and vocabulary may be fixed in writing and 
taught through books; pronunciation may be but roughly 
indicated by our limited alphabet; it cannot be precisely 
set down. To learn to pronounce, we must be in personal 
contact with persons who speak the language as natives. 
Pronunciation is far more*tenacious in its retention of the 
influences of the life of the people, of the masses, than 
are grammar and vocabulary, which may be fixed in writing 
and thus isolated from life. The differences between the 
dialects are chiefly differences of pronunciation. Further- 
more, contrary to the condition in the case of grammar 
and vocabulary, which may be learned by purely theoretical 
means, the acquisition of a correct pronunciation requires 
constant practice of tongue and ear. 

If a child has practised no other pronunciation than 
that of his home dialect, it will be difficult for him to get 
rid of this dialectic tinge. Very few persons have so fine 
a hearing and so ready a tongue as to be able to acquire 
the correct pronunciation of a foreign language late in 
life, or, for that matter, of a strange dialect. Even those 
persons who are complete masters of the foreign language, 
who speak it fluently, will reveal in their pronunciation 
that they are not speaking their mother-tongue. On the 
other hand, having less occasion to practise their own 
language when abroad, these persons will forget its words 


106 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


and its constructions more easily than its pronunciation. I 
met German workers living in England who had been in 
that country since their childhood, and who were already 
having difficulty in speaking German at all-—in fact, who 
preferred to speak English—but whose pronunciation both 
of German and English revealed the part of Germany 
from which they had come. 

If the Jews have their specific accent always and every- 
where—so do the Saxons, so do the Swabians. Does this 
justify us in erecting race traits on this basis? In Saxony 
everybody speaks with a Saxon accent, regardless of his 
country of origin. On the other hand, the children of 
Saxon parents, if they are raised in Wiirttemberg, will not 
speak the Saxon dialect but the Swabian dialect; they will 
speak Bavarian in Miinchen and Plattdeutsch on the Baltic 
coast. Pronunciation is no more hereditary than vocabu- 
lary and grammar, but acquired. It is acquired, however, 
in a somewhat different manner, and the environment of the 
individual is a more important factor. 

If the Jews have a different pronunciation of the lan- 
guages of the nations among whom they live than these 
nations themselves, this proves only that the Jews form a 
separate community in the individual nations, thus remain- 
ing in close contact with each other; only to the extent that 
they lead such a separate existence will they preserve their 
peculiar pronunciation. Jews that have not been raised 
in a closed Jewish community but together with non-Jewish 
people will have as little of the Jewish accent as the other 


107 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


people. There is a well-known anecdote of a Jewish boy 
sent by his father into the country in order that he might 
get rid of the Jewish accent. When his father calls for 
him at the expiration of a year, he finds to his horror that 
little Baruch has not only not relinquished his Jewish pro- 
nunciation but has imparted it to the entire village. 

Little Baruch’s infectious influence deserves all our re- 
spect, but an anecdote of this type could be considered as 
having scientific value only by a Sombart or by the pro- 
tagonists of Jewish ritual murder. The so-called Jewish 
accent disappears more quickly even than their narrow- 
ness of chest when they begin to live in a different social 
environment. The fact that some persons have sought to 
elevate this condition into a race trait proves only that 
there are persons who would represent the Jews as a sep- 
arate race at any cost, and who yet are put in the most 
embarrassing position if asked to state what are the per- 
manent and unmistakable traits of this race. 

The Jews of the present day are not a pure race, either 
geographically or chronologically; even the most super- 
ficial acquaintance with their history will prove this state- 
ment. Judaism arose on the soil of Palestine, a border 
region between two areas, each of which embraces a distinct 
race, probably the result of the peculiarities of the two 
regions: in Palestine, the foot-hills of mountainous Asia 
Minor (in the widest sense of the word, therefore, including 
Armenia), whence originated the Armenoid type, and the 
beginnings of the extensive steppes of Arabia, extending as 


108 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


far as Mesopotamia. In the latter regions there arose the 
type commonly designated as the Semitic type, but which 
might perhaps better be ascribed to a certain area and 
not to a certain language group, namely, the Arabian type. 
Some members of the Armenoid type must be counted with 
the Semitic language family; for example, the Assyrians.” 

Both these geographical races must have come in con- 
tact, at an early period, as well as repeatedly thereafter, 
and have intermingled at their border points, therefore in 
Palestine also. Primitive Israelitic history is of course 
still very obscure: the reports in the Bible are absolutely 
unreliable. But there is no doubt among scholars that the 
population of Palestine must have constituted a mixture 
of races at a very early period, however greatly they may 
differ in minor points. 

But Palestine was a border region in another sense also. 
The “spheres of influence’”—to use a modern term—of the 
first two great states of the historical era, of Babylonia 
and Egypt, met in Palestine. Before the development of 
navigation on the Mediterranean, the entire commercial 
intercourse between these two empires passed through 
Palestine, which also afforded passage for their military 
forces, and often even served as their battleground. 

Palestine has, therefore, seen merchants with their slaves 
and mercenaries, who often came from great distances, and 
belonged to the most varied races. The mercenaries often 


23 Cf. among others, Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums, 
2nd ed., i, li, p. 377 et seq. 


109 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


remained garrisoned in the fortresses of Palestine for long 
periods. Such elements have never failed to provide a 
numerous posterity in any country in which they have 
been stationed. 

Furthermore, the Israelites were at first by no means 
averse to conjugal relations with persons of other races. 
Stade informs us on this point: 

“The people of Israel were no more a people of pure 
blood than any other people on earth: for, in addition to 
Canaanitic, Hebraic, Arabic components, individuals of 
Aramaic and Egyptian origin were also absorbed by them. 

“How slight was the effort they made to be exclusive is 
apparent from the circumstance that we meet with an 
Ishmaelite in David’s family. In addition, the ancient 
Israelites were distinctly surprised by the timidity with 
which the ancient Egyptians guarded themselves against 
any contact with foreigners.“ Of course, this does not 
mean that the Jews did not prize their own nationality and 
the purity of their Israelitic origin. But since such purity 
was surely quite unusual in the oldest period, its absence 
was not considered a blemish. This makes it easy for us 
to understand that while, according to the most ancient 
form of the legend, Isaac, the son of promise, was to have 
married a woman of his kindred, it is narrated without 

24 Compare Genesis xliii, 832, where we read of Joseph and his 
brothers: “And they set on for him by himself, and for them by 
themselves, and for the Egyptians, which did eat with him by them- 


selves: because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; 
for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.” 


110 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


apparent surprise that other fathers marry foreign women: 
Judah, a Canaanitic woman; Joseph, an Egyptian 
woman.” * 

While the position of Palestine facilitated the incursion 
of foreign elements and an intermingling with them, it also 
facilitated the spreading of the inhabitants of the country 
among their neighbours. Being a poor, unproductive coun- 
try, Palestine was likely to suffer from excess of popula- 
tion. It was too small and weak, the superior power of its 
neighbours too crushing, to enable Palestine to dispose of 
its population by settling it in conquered regions. The 
territory of the Pheenicians cut Palestine off from good 
seaports and the practice of navigation. Therefore the 
path of colonisation beyond the seas was also closed to the 
Israelites. ‘Their surplus population had no other alter- 
native than to go abroad as merchants (sometimes as mer- 
cenaries, but these played no important part in history). 
In this capacity, they travelled further and further and 
founded a number of settlements. In many cities they be- 
came so numerous as to conduct not only trading opera- 
tions, but also to employ artisans of their own; the number 
of their intellectuals also increased. 

Constantly crowded and congested in their homeland by 
the overwhelming strength of their neighbours, this little 
race had no other path of expansion. This path was pur- 
sued so energetically that the Israelitic population abroad 
finally became more numerous than the home population. 


25 Stade, Geschichte des Volkes Israel, vol. i, p. 111. 
111 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


The home population repeatedly loses its status as an 
independent nation, finally losing it forever. But before 
this time had come, the centre of gravity of Judaism had 
been shifted from its original location to a number of cities 
in Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia. 

As long as the Israelites had remained in Palestine, the 
uniform natural environment necessarily favored the exist- 
ence of a tendency in the direction of the production of a 
uniform geographical race, thereby somewhat opposing the 
differentiation of types resulting from race mixture. But 
their migrations and their distribution to the most different 
natural environments completely abolished this tendency 
toward a uniform geographical race. But the mixture of 
races, which was already traditional, now went on with 
redoubled speed. 

The greater number of the Jews now lived outside of 
their homeland. Strangers among strangers, tolerated 
only, quite often regarded with hostility, they found no 
support in the little nation whose capital was Jerusalem. 
They could maintain themselves only by observing the most 
intimate unity among them. This unity applied not only 
to the specific locality, but also to all the localities; there 
was a sort of interlocal solidarity. In the immense region 
over which they were spread, they were never simultane- 
ously persecuted, plundered, exiled, in all their colonies. 
If such events came to pass in one region, the victims, the 
despoiled and homeless, always found active assistance and 
support in other regions. 


112 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


But this unified organisation became less and less na- 
tional. The Jews had never constituted a uniform race; 
they now ceased to be even a nation. Everything that 
constitutes the essence of a nation had been lost to them; 
they had lost their common land, even their common 
language. 

“The Jews living abroad had to speak the foreign 
tongue, and if several generations had already been living 
abroad, the younger generations finally would be able to 
speak only the language of their native country, forgetting 
their mother tongue. Greek particularly became very pop- 
ular among them. Already in the Third Century pz.c., the 
sacred writings of the Jews were translated into Greek, 
probably for the reason that but few Alexandrian Jews still 
understood Hebrew and possibly also for purposes of 
propaganda among the Greeks. . . . Several centuries be- 
fore the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, Hebrew 
already ceased to be a living tongue.” *° 

There remained to the Jews of their existence as a nation 
practically only their national aspiration, their desire to 
become a nation again, and as no bounds may be set to 
man’s wishes, they felt that this nation would be headed 
by an indomitable saviour, the Messiah. But, as a matter of 
actual fact, the Jews were becoming more and more trans- 
formed from a nation into an international association. 
Their bond of union was the remnant of their ancient 


26 Karl Kautsky, Foundations of Christianity, New York, 1925, pp. 
257, 258. 


113 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


national life that was still maintained, namely, their re- 
ligion. But precisely the religions, in the form of myth 
and philosophy, were in a state of constant flux in the 
centuries before and after the birth of Christ, particularly 
in the circles from which the Jews were then exclusively 
recruited, namely, the populations of the cities. The firm 
and tangible symbol of the Jews’ community was not the 
philosophy of religion, but the religious ceremonial; this it 
was that served the Jews of all the regions then involved 
in world traffic as the bond recognised and recognisable by 
all. And simultaneously as a means of keeping outsiders 
out. 

We must not infer that the Jews aimed to preserve a 
rigid exclusiveness toward all new elements. On the con- 
trary, with the progress of their loss of a national exist- 
ence, and their assumption of the character of a mere 
international association for mutual aid, we find a simul- 
taneous increase of the desire to swell their ranks by 
means of propaganda and thus to acquire new forces. Con- 
quests of new territory were impossible under the circum- 
stances; propaganda was resorted to. 

** “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!’ 
the gospel lays these words into the mouth of Jesus, ‘for 
ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte and, when 
he is made, ye make him twofold more a child of hell than 
yourselves’,”’ 7” 

I have treated the causes and effects of this propaganda 

27 Matthew xxiii, 15; Kautsky, ibid., p. 260. 


114 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


in full detail in my Foundations of Christianity.** It would 
lead us too far afield to go over all this ground again. It is 
sufficient to state here that this propaganda met with 
great success; and the greater the success, the more neces- 
sary would it, of course, seem to be to keep aloof from all 
undependable newcomers. ‘The strict observation of the 
ritual prescriptions now became doubly necessary. In 
Freemasonry we find a similar rich development of cere- 
monial which, particularly for intelligent persons, fre- 
quently makes a very stupid impression, and is valuable 
only because it serves as a means of making it difficult for 
frivolous interlopers to gain admission. ‘Those who sub- 
jected themselves permanently to the Jewish rite might 
be depended upon as reliable fellow-members. 

But every stranger was welcome who would recognise 
this rite—without regard to origin. Jewish exclusiveness 
was not an exclusiveness of race. The Jewish propaganda 
in all the regions of the ancient world was rather calculated 
to stimulate tremendously the mingling of races within 
Judaism. 

In spite of the great success of this propaganda, it did 
not take hold of the masses of the pagan peoples. These 
rather displayed an increasing aversion to Judaism, as the 
latter ceased to constitute a nation and became an inter- 
national league. The more Judaism lost the character of 
a nation, the more did it cease to embrace all the classes 
of society as then known, now including only the urban 


28 Kautsky, ibid., pp. 253-264 
115 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


groups, in many cases only those concerned with commer- 
cial and financial business. As long as the Jews had been 
a nation, and a very small nation at that, they had been a 
source of concern to their nearest neighbours—by reason 
of their aspirations for expansion or for maintaining them- 
selves—only in occasional instances. ‘The more they devel- 
oped into a league of members of a specific class, spread 
throughout the world, the more were they involved in the 
class struggles of the entire world. And this in a two-fold 
manner. In the first place, they were drawn into the 
struggles of their own class against other classes, and in 
the second place, they were also drawn into conflicts with 
competitors within their own class, for this class was much 
annoyed by the strength drawn by the Jews from their 
international dissemination and solidarity. These two 
varieties of class struggle were ultimately combined in a 
manner that was quite uncomfortable for the Jews: com- 
petitors in their own commercial class made efforts to turn 
aside the hostility of other classes, particularly to the 
Jewish members of their class, thus transforming struggles 
against middlemen, tax farmers, usurers, into struggles 
against the Jews. This distortion of conditions was fa- 
voured by the fact that the Jews were defenceless foreigners, 
and also—to just as great a degree—by those properties 
of the Jews by which they sought to maintain themselves, 
since they were defenceless foreigners, by their close union 
and their international solidarity. Elements of the popula- 
tion thus constituted easily become suspicious in the eyes 


116 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


of popular masses with local prejudices. It was just as 
easy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, in Eng- 
land, to instigate a massacre of Catholics for the most 
trivial causes as it was throughout the last two thousand 
years to inaugurate occasional pogroms against the Jews 
everywhere in Europe. But no one has ever thought of 
ever designating the English persecutions of Catholics as 
race struggles and the English Catholics as a peculiar, 
“pure race”’. 

The situation became a desperate one for the Jews when 
the Government authorities also rose against them. Before 
Cesarism felt itself firm in the saddle, it had considered the 
Jews to be a valuable ally. But as imperial absolutism 
became solidified, it became more suspicious of all inde- 
pendent organisations, including Judaism. And when the 
Jews of Jerusalem went so far as to seek to maintain their 
independence as opposed to the Romans, by actual war- 
fare, Judaism was completely outlawed.” 

From now on, the propaganda of Judaism was deprived 
of every foundation; everywhere the Jews were forced into 
the defensive, all accessions from non-Jewish circles were 
cut off. The Jews then became a caste which had to 
increase by inbreeding, within their own ranks. For the 
first time, the isolation of the Jews became quite marked. 

This condition found its culmination in the ghetto of the 
feudal era, in the Jewish quarters in which the Jewish 
population of each city was strictly confined. This condi- 

29 Kautsky, ibid., pp. 167-171. 


117 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


tion might perhaps have succeeded in maintaining the Jews 
as a pure race if they had been a pure race to begin with. 
But the Jews never were a pure race, and even at the period 
of their most stringent isolation there were two conditions 
opposing the formation of a uniform race. 

The Jews could not become a geographical race, for 
their settlements extended over the most varied and distant 
countries. On the other hand, even if the Jews had orig- 
inally constituted a puré race, they could not have main- 
tained their purity, owing to the impossibility of preventing 
a mingling with foreign elements. 

Precisely the period of the most rigid isolation of the 
Jews is also the period of their greatest legal disability, 
subjecting them to one persecution after another. They 
were not robbed only of their valuables; not only were men 
slain, but women were violated in great numbers. But the 
posterity of these women were considered as Jews and bred 
as such. Even though we should assume that all Jewish 
women had always been inaccessible to the seductive arts 
of their non-Jewish neighbours, the fact of the persecu- 
tions of the Jews alone would be sufficient to preclude the 
possibility of an immutable “purity” of Jewish blood 
during the last two thousand years. A mixed race from 
the very outset, the Jews, in the course of their migrations, 
have come into contact with a great succession of new 
races, and their blood has thus become more and more 
mixed. 

We have already pointed out the significant fact that the 


118 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


Jews of each region present many physical traits in com- 
mon with the non-Jewish population of the same region. 
This may, perhaps, be an effect of like natural conditions 
on both Jews and non-Jews. But it is just as plausible to 
assume that it may be the result of a sexual contact between 
Jews and non-Jews. Probably the case is the same as in the 
world of organisms in general: both factors, adaptation 
and heredity, have had considerable to do with the deter- 
mination of bodily traits. 

But the non-Jews among whom the Jews live are no less 
a mixed race than the Jews themselves. Jewish blood flows 
in their veins also. It is not only the extra-conjugal 
relations between—let us say—Jewish business men or 
students and Christian servant girls or waitresses that 
makes many a Christian child an “offspring of the Jews”. 
Perhaps even more Jewish blood was transmitted to the 
body of the Christian population by the conversion of 
Jews, a process which has been going on for centuries. In 
Spain, for example, in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Cen- 
turies, hundreds of thousands of Jews were converted to 
Christianity. Their posterity infected the Aryan race with 
their blood. There is no Jew today who can say to himself 
with certainty that he has not a drop of non-Jewish blood 
in his veins, if only for the reason that there never has 
existed a Jewish race either in the sense of a pure breed of 
domestic animals or in the other sense, that of a geograph- 
ical race. 

But even if we should assume that all those who were 


119 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


following the ritual laws of the Jews two thousand years 
ago constituted a specific race, no Jew of the present day 
can assert with absolute sureness that his ancestors in- 
cluded only elements that had descended from the Jews of 
that period. 

On the other hand, also, there is not a single Christian 
who can declare with absolute certainty that his own ante- 
cedents include no Jew among their members. 

No race traits can be mentioned which could be used as a 
criterion for determining this question. The “Jewish coun- 
tenance”, black hair, flashing eyes, and particularly the 
aquiline nose, heritages from one of the many races out of 
which the Jews were built up, cannot serve as a criterion, 
no matter how outspoken these traits may be considered 
to be, for they are found also, as we have seen, among many 
non-Jewish races. Furthermore, they are found only 
among a small fraction of the Jews themselves. This char- 
acteristic countenance has probably become associated 
with the Jewish type, as in those regions of Northern 
Europe in which the Jews lived together in rather great 
numbers, namely, east of the Elbe and north of the Car- 
pathians, it is less frequent among the non-Jews, and there- 
fore most sharply distinguished from the countenance 
found in the most frequent types, and therefore most 
striking. , 

Yet even in those regions, the “Jewish face” does not of 
itself determine the Jewish type. Particularly striking 
qualities of dress and coiffure, kaftan and pajes (side 


120 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


curls), pronunciation, bodily carriage, play of the features, 
and gesticulations—all of which are social peculiarities, 
handed down by more or less involuntary imitation of one’s 
environment—must cooperate with the hereditary Jewish 
face in order to make the unmistakable, the “correct” 
Jewish type apparent. 

The cartoonists of the comic papers are quite justified 
in depicting Jews as possessing the “Jewish countenance”’. 
The task of the caricaturist is to exaggerate and emphasize 
striking and unusual traits. But when anthropologists 
dignify this countenance by making it an earmark of a 
specific Jewish race, they are creating a caricature of their 
own science. Werner Sombart, of course, imagines that 
Jews may always be detected by their faces: 

“A later age will hardly find it possible to believe that 
persons existed in our day who were incapable of dis- 
tinguishing the Jew as a member of a specific nation or of a 
specific race (it does not at all matter whether the Jews 
be called Jews or not) from a Negro or an Eskimo, or a 
Pomeranian, or a Southern Frenchman”, and this is the 
more culpable, for: “Our eye has been obviously much 
sharpened, owing to training in the natural sciences, in its 
ability to detect the influence of the blood in man, during 
the last generation.” *° 

This sharp eye has been rendered so acute in the case of 
Sombart that it is sufficient for him to cast a glance at a 
portrait, even though it be but a wood-cut or a copper 

30 Werner Sombart, Die Zukunft der Juden, pp. 50, 55. 


121 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


engraving, to determine at once whether the original was a 
Jew or not: 

“It is well known that the Governor-General of the Dutch 
East Indian Company who, though he may not be consid- 
ered as the founder of the Dutch power in Java, neverthe- 
less contributed much to the solidification of this power, 
bore the name of Cohn (Coen). And we can easily convince 
ourselves that he was not the only Jewish governor of the 
Dutch East Indian possessions, if we glance through a set 
of portraits of these officials.” * 

If a man’s name is Coen, Sombart, owing to his acute 
sense of the blood in man, “knows”? that his name was 
Cohn, and that he was a Jew. Those who are acquainted 
with the Dutch colonial policy, and who “know” more of 
Coen than his name, are of course aware that Coen had 
nothing to do with Cohn, and that he was as little a Jew 
as the other governors whose portraits have been exam- 
ined by our conscientious professor.” 

By means of the same profound method, Sombart de- 
clares the Scotchman Law as likely to have been a Jew, for 
Law might have been Levy and in “‘many (!) of his pic- 
tures” he looks Jewish! 

Another example of this splendid method is the following, 
also taken from Sombart: ‘In order to prove the sig- 
nificance of the Jews as financiers in France, it is sufficient 


81 Werner Sombart, Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, pp. 30, 31. 
82Cf. W. v. Ravesteijn, Kapitalismus und Judentum, Die Neue 
Zeit, vol. xxx, part 2, pp. 714, 715. 


122 


PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS 


to recall the influential position occupied by Samuel Ber- 
nard during the later portion of the reign of Louis XIV 
and the entire reign of Louis XV.” * 

In other words, to prove the importance of the Jews, “‘it 
is sufficient” for Sombart to remind us of a single Jew. 
This is quite funny, and is made even funnier if this Jew 
should happen to be not a Jew. Sombart’s critic in the 
Archiv fiir Sozialwissenschaft und Soztalpolitik, Julius 
Guttmann, has the following to say on this subject. 

“In so important a country as France, the Jews remained 
for a long time of very subordinate importance as finan- 
ciers. The only great Jewish financier discovered by Som- 
bart as far down as the Eighteenth Century is Samuel 
Bernard. Bernard, according to the evidence of his bap- 
tismal certificate, which has been long available, was a 
Christian by birth, and the only circumstance that could 
be adduced in favour of his Jewish descent would be the fact 
that his father and grandfather had already lived in France 
as painters.” ** 

Houston Stewart Chamberlain seems to be just as skilful 
in detecting the “influence of the blood”, for he declares 
concerning Marx and Engels that they were two “highly 
gifted Jews, who sought to transplant to Europe from 


99 35 


Asia many of the best thoughts of their race”. 


33 Sombart. Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, p. 56. 

34 Archivo fiir Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, vol. xxxvi, p. 159. 

35 Die Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, 1899, vol. ii, p. 
835. 


123 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


The “scientific”? method of the Sombart and Chamberlain 
school of Jewish studies was already anticipated by our 
friend Schonlank more than twenty years ago in a de- 
lightful parody in the feuileton of the Vorwdrts—it hap- 
pened to be an April First number—in which he proved 
that Hammerstein, the well-known editor-in-chief of the 
Kreuzzeitung, was of Jewish extraction, originally bearing 
the name Chamer Stein. ~ And how about Chamer Laihn— 
has not this name also a Jewish sound, Mr. Chamberlain? 


124 


CHAPTER VI 


MENTAL QUALITIES OF THE JEWISH RACE 


THERE is not much to be gotten, therefore, out of the 
bodily traits of the Jewish race. Even the racial anti- 
Semites themselves do not display any very great con- 
fidence in the certainty of such traits, in spite of all their 
bombast concerning the profound natural gulf separating 
the Jewish race from the other races. They are very care- 
ful not to draw practical inferences from their race the- 
ories, or to demand—let us say—the political disfranchise- 
ment, the prohibition against marrying “Aryan” persons, 
or the elimination from Europe of every man who displays 
a “Jewish countenance”, Nor do they recognise every man 
as an Aryan who fails to possess this countenance. They 
are finally brought to the pass of recognising as the natural 
“race trait” of the Jews only the records of the Bureau of 
Vital Statistics. | 

But of course, the wickedness and disaster involved in 
the Jewish race is not based upon the peculiarity of their 
bodily traits, but on their mental traits, not on their 
hooked noses and crooked legs, but on their crooked moral- 
ity. The high intelligence, the close solidarity of the Jews, 
are not virtues but vices, For they make the evil qualities 


of the Jews more dangerous, namely, his importunity, his 


125 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


destructive, purely negative criticism, and, particularly, his 
heartless, ruthless desire for gain. In order to prove that 
the Jew is a born criminal, our racial anti-Semites bring 
no more destructive argument to bear than the over- 
whelming assertion that the Jew is a born capitalist. They 
claim that all the vulgarity of the capitalist mode of 
thought, which the Teutonic individual has had the greatest 
difficulty in acquiring, has been inherent in the Jewish blood 
from the beginning of history. Long before the slightest 
trace of capitalism was in existence, the Jew had already 
been impregnated by some miracle with the capitalist mode 
of thought and feeling, an undistinguishable race trait 
for all times and countries, and in all modes of production. 
It is therefore not surprising that the Jew leaves all his 
competitors far behind in the game of capitalist compe- 
tition, thus injuring the Christian proletarians beyond 
repair by causing them to be exploited not only by “blond 
beasts” who had to be artificially trained to this capitalist 
viciousness. 

The thorn in the flesh of these theorists is the mental 
qualities of the Jews. The fact that these qualities include 
a number that were unpleasant to their Jewish neighbours 
was an observation frequently made long before the days 
of the racial anti-Semites. But formerly these traits had 
been ascribed to their peculiar social situation, to their 
oppression, their limitation to a few fixed callings. It had 
formerly been assumed that with the elimination of this 
exceptional situation, these peculiarities also would dis- 


126 


MENTAL QUALITIES 


appear. Under these circumstances, a criticism of the 
Jews usually developed into a criticism of state and society 
and into a demand for social and political reforms. But 
it is possible to escape the necessity of making such de- 
mands if the mental qualities of the Jews are considered to 
be an inextinguishable race trait. 

“Race alone may often serve only to cloak our igno- 
rance,” says Fishberg, “particularly if all the conditions of 
the environment have been ignored.” * 

No doubt this is often the case. But just as frequently 
we find “race” resorted to as a means of preventing any 
criticism of society, any effort to secure its further evolu- 
tion, or even the investigation of its nature, the conception 
of race being used in such instances in order to nullify the 
influence of the milieu—including also the artificial, social 
milieu—on man. 

We have observed in the preceding chapter that the 
Jews are a mixed race, but we were nevertheless in a 
position to indicate the traces of the bodily traits of one 
of the geographical races of which this mixture is com- 
posed. We can no longer say anything concerning its 
mental traits, for mental traits are so intangible and vari- 
able that it is difficult if not impossible to assign per- 
manent mental traits with definiteness to a certain race. 
This impossibility becomes the greater in the case of a 
prehistoric race of which no written documents are pre- 
served. We completely lack any material for determin- 


1 Fishberg, German ed., p. 86. 
127 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


ing the mental qualities of the races out of which the 
population of Palestine was built up several thousands of 
years ago. 

But it is very difficult even to outline the characteristics 
of a nation on the basis of its written evidence. It is even 
very daring to judge a man on the basis of certain of his 
writings. Many individualities express themselves differ- 
ently in their writings than in their real character. Per- 
sonal observation itself is not sufficient to enable us to 
grasp the entire inner life of an individual; in fact, the 
individual is in the dark concerning much of his own 
individuality. He is aware of his inner life only where it 
enters his consciousness, and even his conscious mental life 
is coloured, simplified, idealised, by memory. 

What little information we have concerning the life of 
earlier races is in the form of certain expressions by certain 
individuals. It is as a rule entirely impossible to determine 
at this late date to what extent these expressions are typ- 
ical, if only for the class involved, not to mention the entire 
people. 

Such evidences are extremely important as a means of 
determining the course of events, the problems faced by the 
human beings of the period and people in question, the stage 
of their knowledge and ability, the goals of their aspira- 
tions, the natural and artificial environment in which they 
moved. But he who would go beyond these things, he who 
would infer their entire inner life from these materials, will 
be able as a rule to deliver merely the production of his 


128 


MENTAL QUALITIES 


own imagination; this product will be interesting chiefly as 
a characterisation of the investigator rather than of those 
investigated. Nothing is more difficult than to place one- 

self inside another’s skin. | 

Even if there existed anywhere a civilised nation corre- 
sponding to a pure race, and which had preserved its race 
purity for thousands of years, we should not be able to 
trace its mental idiosyncrasies through these thousands of 
years with such precision as to be able to state which 
elements must be assigned to heredity and which to the 
influence of the environment. 

But in the case of a mixed race, the mere attempt to 
make such a distinction would be ridiculous. 

There is more likelihood of success if we begin, not with 
the race, not with the environment, not with the past, but 
with the present. In this case, we can at least determine 
to a certain extent, by means of numerous observations, 
what alterations in the mental character are produced at 
this day by alterations in the environment. Proceeding 
from this knowledge, we may then with a certain definite- 
ness interpret many evidences of former times. For we are 
then proceeding from the known to an explanation of the 
unknown, while to make the assumption that any mental 
characteristic known to us is a race trait is equivalent to 
the opposite process of explaining the known by means of 
the unknown. 

The former method, that which begins with the environ- 
ment, is quite sufficient to explain the mental traits ob- 


129 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


servable in the greater number of the Jews of the present 
day. We need only to note the influence of the urban 
environment on human beings at this day, the alterations in 
the country-dweller when exposed to the influence of city 
life, and then to recall that the Jews are the only race on 
earth that has constituted a purely urban population for 
approximately two thousand years: we now have an almost 
perfect explanation of Jewish traits. They are an exag- 
gerated form of urban traits in general. I used the urban 
traits as early as 1890 in order to explain the Jewish 
character”. The Jew has become the city dweller par 
excellence. ‘The uniformity of the artificial environment 
imparted to the Jews everywhere a uniform mental type, 
in spite of all the variations in their natural environment, 
and all the differences in the inherited race elements. If 
this uniform type should be accepted as a race type, the 
descendant of the homo alpinus might be designated as the 
homo urbanus. 

Until long after the beginning of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, the circumstances under which the great masses of the 
population lived in cities were—regardless of the country 
or race concerned—so destructive that it was impossible 
for them to maintain their numbers by natural increase 
alone. If there had not been a constant accession of new 
forces from the country, they would have died out re- 


2 Die Neue Zeit, vol. viii, pp. 22 et seq. Cf. also my article, “Das 


Massaker von Kischeneff und die Judenfrage”, Die Neue Zeit, vol. 
xxi, part 2, p. 303. 


130 


MENTAL QUALITIES 


peatedly. <A large fraction of the urban population con- 
sists everywhere of elements derived from the provinces; 
only an insignificant fraction can point to city ancestors 
for more than a century past. The Jews, however, have 
accomplished the astounding feat of so adapting them- 
selves to urban life as not only to maintain themselves for 
two thousand years as an almost exclusively urban popula- 
tion, but even to increase in numbers under these conditions. 

This may have been in part the operation of an uncon- 
scious process of selection, resulting in the elimination of 
all those unsuited to urban life. In the case of the non- 
Jewish population, this process was not necessary, since 
it was constantly interrupted by the accession of new ele- 
ments from the country districts, who married into the 
established families, thus bringing about a mingling of 
selected and non-selected elements. 

It is very questionable whether natural selection, in the 
form of the survival of the fittest, has had much influence 
on evolution. But there is no doubt that it has had an 
immense influence on the shaping and maintaining of species 
by means of the elimination of those unfit for the given 
environment. 

In addition to this unconscious adaption, there is also 
a conscious adaptation. We have already pointed out that 
the Jew is far more inclined to consult a physician, and to 
observe the physician’s orders conscientiously, than is the 
non-Jew, and also, that the Jew—at least in the ghetto— 
is far less addicted to alcohol. This difference between Jew 


131 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


and non-Jew is at bottom again merely a difference between 
city-dweller and country-dweller. 

Owing to the conditions of his life, the latter is far 
superior to the city-dweller in strength; he is rarely ill. In 
the fullness of his strength, he despises disease. Owing to 
his love of displaying his vigour, and to his fear of appear- 
ing to be a weakling, he considers it a disgrace to be sick; 
besides, he is often too ignorant to have confidence in a 
physician. 

The case with alcohol is similar. Alcohol is far less 
injurious to the vigorous peasant than to the neurasthenic 
city-dweller. And, the better his nervous state, the greater 
his muscular energy, the greater will be the quantities of 
alcohol he can consume without injury. Competitive drink- 
ing becomes a means of displaying bodily vigour, and he 
who avoids such tests is considered a coward. 

There are no celebrations in the country without exten- 
sive intoxication. This condition occasionally leads to 
brawls, to murder and other killings, but otherwise has no 
injurious effect on the healthy peasant. In the city, where 
there is less opportunity for varied physical movement in 
the open air, and where the work to be accomplished is 
either more mental or more monotonous, and is performed 
in confined quarters and shops, the need of neutralising 
the feeling of an exhausted. nervous condition becomes 
greater, the desire for alcohol is greater than in the coun- 
try; the opportunities for obtaining alcohol are more nu- 
merous, but its effect is more destructive. This is clearly 


132 


MENTAL QUALITIES 


apparent today, with great masses of the population living 
and working in cities, and with the present comparative, 
if not absolute cessation in the arrival of new elements from 
the country, as compared with the size of the city popula- 
tion. This condition, as well as the progress of a knowl- 
edge of physiology, is giving rise to a more and more 
energetic struggle with alcoholism. In this matter, the 
Jews have a lead of centuries, not in the requirement of 
abstinence, but in their abhorrence of intoxication; not so 
much because of a scientific knowledge, as because of their 
social position. ‘The nations of the south are less inclined 
to be immoderate than those of the north. The Jews, com- 
ing from the south, and now living among Teutons and 
Slavs, being cut off from their environment, were not ex- 
posed to the temptations of this environment. Further- 
more, the defenceless Jew was always far more exposed to 
danger than the non-Jew, and therefore sobriety was far 
more necessary to him. An intoxicated Jew who would 
transgress the laws would have brought great misfortune 
not only upon himself but upon the entire Jewry of his 
home town. ‘This is perhaps the best explanation that can 
be offered for the moderation of the Jews. Although 
originally serving only to render the position of the Jews 
more secure, and perhaps practised as a habit handed 
down from their Oriental home, this abstinence has neces- 
sarily had an extremely favourable hygienic influence. 

Of similar importance is the Jew’s respect for learning, 
particularly for medicine. In the crude and ignorant con- 


133 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


dition which settled down over Europe during the migra- 
tion of nations, the Jews were for a long time one of the 
few asylums still retaining remnants of ancient civilisation. 
As a result, they preserved a higher respect for science 
than their environment, and also practised science more in- 
tensively, except where this tendency was frustrated by 
the exclusiveness of the ghetto. The high level to which 
the art of healing had been developed among the Greeks 
was maintained in the first place by Jewish physicians, then 
further developed in the Orient, and passed on to the 
Arabs. Their better medical understanding was handed 
on to the Jews of the north from the Orient and from 
Spain. 

By reason of a gradual natural selection, as well as 
owing to a conscious adaptation to their conditions of 
life, the Jews were finally enabled to resist the destructive 
influences of the city environment more successfully than 
the new arrivals from the provinces. While the non-Jewish 
city population was subject to constant renewal every few 
generations, the Jews had become a purely urban popula- 
tion. 

The peculiarities of their historical position not only 
limited the Jews to the cities, but to certain callings within 
the cities. 

They had to live as strangers among strangers, which 
is not so difficult for merchants. At first, merchants not 
only undertake to purchase and sell goods, but also to 
transport them, and such convoys of goods had often to 


134 


MENTAL QUALITIES 


be personally conducted or at least personally supervised. 
The trade in commodities required that the merchants 
travel and sojourn in foreign countries, and all those na- 
tions which had a trade in commodities had adapted and 
accustomed themselves to the presence of foreign mer- 
chants among them. 

The Jews, who found themselves compelled to leave their 
homeland, found it easiest to get along in foreign coun- 
tries as merchants. Furthermore, it was those Jews whose 
mental makeup was best adapted to trade who were most 
likely to venture abroad. 

In their original home the Jews, like any other nation, 
gave birth to all the classes and vocations natural to their 
social conditions. ‘They displayed as little as any other 
people the mental limitation considered by anthropo-so- 
ciologists as the determining characteristic of the various 
races, namely, a turning of their faculties to one calling 
or to a few callings at most. They showed as much apti- 
tude for agriculture as for trade and industry; as much 
for military service as for the art of government; as much 
for philosophy as for poetry. For the mind of the in- 
dividual human being is far richer in its aptitudes than 
many a race theoretician can imagine. It is only the bar- 
riers of a narrow, monotonous life that cause an individual 
to develop only a few of his faculties to their full capacity, 
and perhaps to hand them on to his progeny in a more 
pronounced form, while other faculties may become stunted 


through desuetude. 
135 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


The Jews outside of Palestine were therefore obliged to 
turn to trade chiefly. We therefore find them a trading 
nation at an early date. They thus must surely have de- 
veloped emphatically those abilities needed by the mer- 
chant, and this great capacity must in the course of many 
generations of such activity within the same families have 
finally produced hereditary aptitudes and traits. 

However, the Jews did not limit themselves to trade. 
Wherever possible, they resorted to other vocations also, 
particularly in cities where there were great numbers of 
Jews. Trade can never support more than a small 
minority, for trade is non-productive. Trade may under 
certain circumstances facilitate production but can never 
replace it. The Jews could not constitute a large fraction 
of the population of a city except where they were per- 
mitted to practise some other calling besides that of trade, 
perhaps a handicraft. On the other hand, where great 
numbers of Jews were living together, artisans and mem- 
bers of the liberal professions, such as physicians, who 
were of Jewish extraction, had better opportunities to 
maintain themselves as they found among their numerous 
co-religionists a strong support and an adequate market 
for their products and services. In antiquity, wherever 
the Jews lived together in great numbers, for instance, in 
Alexandria, we find also many artisans among them, in 
spite of that mysterious race predilection which is sup- 
posed to have made the commercial spirit an ineradicable 
characteristic of every Jew from the very beginning of his- 


136 


MENTAL QUALITIES 


tory, in other words, long before there was any such thing 
as trade. 

Being exclusively city-dwellers, they naturally did not 
favour those callings for which the new arrival from the 
country is best adapted, but those for which city life is the 
best preparation: such callings are those, on the one hand, 
which require much intelligence and theoretical knowledge, 
and which, on the other hand, do not demand much physical 
strength. When they turn to handicraft, they become, 
therefore, tailors rather than smiths, while the surplus of 
the merchant families, which cannot be absorbed in com- 
merce, or which does not need to practise commerce, turns 
to purely mental labour. 

Trade not only develops an excellent material foundation 
for mental labour, by favouring the prosperity of the 
families concerned, but far more by reason of the excellent 
natural talents encouraged by it. In my book, Founda- 
tions of Christianity, I already pointed out the connection 
between “trade and philosophy’’.*® I have shown in that 
work that industry develops rather the abilities required by 
the reproductive arts, while trade develops rather the 
capacities for mathematical, abstract thought, but also for 
investigation and mental speculation, the tendency to as- 
sociate with elements known those unknown elements that 
are necessarily connected with them. Furthermore, world 
commerce expands the horizon beyond that which is cus- 
tomary and traditional. 

8 Op cit., pp. 203-208. 


137 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


To be sure, scientific speculation is not to be regarded as 
identical with commercial speculation. But they differ not 
in the abilities required for them, but in the conditions of 
their application. Occupation with trade, investigation 
and speculation from an interested standpoint, are a great 
obstacle to disinterested investigation and speculation, in 
other words, to scientific work, and vice versa. 

“Trade develops the necessary ability for scientific pur- 
poses, but not its application to scientific ends. On the 
contrary, where trade secures an influence over learning, 
its effect is entirely in the direction of doctoring the re- 
sults of learning for its own purposes, of which our present- 
day bourgeois learning presents numerous examples. 

‘Scientific thought could only be developed in a class 
that was endowed with all the gifts, experience and knowl- 
edge involved in trade, but also liberated from the necessity 
of earning a living, and therefore possessing the necessary 
leisure, opportunity, and pleasure in disinterested investi- 
gation, in the solution of problems without regard to their 
immediate, practical and personal outcome.” * 

These conditions were realised in antiquity in some of 
the Greek commercial cities, but also in a number of Jewish 
settlements, particularly in Alexandria. We have already 
pointed out the importance of the Alexandrian Jewry in 
the history of medicine. Its importance in the development 
of philosophy is equally considerable. 

Their respect for science and their desire to provide the 

4 Ibid., p. 207. 


138 


MENTAL QUALITIES 


scholar with an existence free from material care dis- 
tinguished the Jews of the Middle Ages as mentally far 
superior to their barbarous environment. The Church 
was one of the communities, besides the Jews, which main- 
tained alive the remnants of ancient civilisation in the 
midst of the Christian-Teutonic barbarism, and for this 
the Church has been not a little praised. But little atten- 
tion has been given to the fact that the Church was prac- 
tising a mental selection of the most dubious kind. In the 
Jewish families marriage and parenthood on the part of the 
most intelligent were assiduously encouraged.* The Catholic 
Church absorbed the most intelligent elements of the 
Christian families and doomed them to celibacy, forbade 
them to reproduce. This was equivalent to the precise op- 
posite of the Jewish process of selection; the Church was 
practising a breeding of the most stupid, of course only 
during the period in which it served as the goal of the 
most intelligent men in the nation. 


5 This condition finally attained absurd dimensions among the Jews 
of Poland. In the section of his Geschichte der neueren Philosophie 
that deals with the Jewish philosopher Maimon (born 1754, died 1800), 
Kuno Fischer says: 

“Among the Polish Jews the Talmudists and rabbis enjoyed the 
greatest prestige. Every family regarded it as a matter of pride to 
have a scholar of this type among its members, and if none of its sons 
was a Talmudist, effort was made to secure a son-in-law to embellish 
the family with such a connection. Young Talmudists were very 
much in demand as good matches. . . . Salomon Maimon had attained 
the third (supreme) degree in the Talmudic learning at the age of 
nine. ... He was married before attaining the age of eleven. He 
was a husband in his eleventh year, a father in his fourteenth year.” 
(Section v, pp. 120, 121.) 


139 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


Lecky, in his Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Ra- 
tionalism in Europe, describes in glowing words the en- 
thusiasm of the Jews for learning: 

“While those around them were groveling in the darkness 
of besotted ignorance; while juggling miracles and lying 
relics were the themes on which all Europe was expatiat- 
ing; while the intellect of Christendom, enthralled by count- 
less superstitions, had sunk into a deadly torpor, in which 
all love of enquiry and all search for truth were abandoned, 
the Jews were still pursuing the path of knowledge, amass- 
ing learning, and stimulating progress with the same un- 
flinching constancy that they manifested in their faith. 
They were the most skilful physicians, the ablest financiers, 
and among the most profound philosophers; while they 
were only second to the Moors in the cultivation of nat- 
ural science. ‘They were also the chief interpreters to 
Western Europe of Arab learning. But their most im- 
portant service, and that with which we are now most 
especially concerned, was in sustaining commercial activity. 
For centuries they were almost its only representatives.” ° 

Such were the circumstances under which the mental 
character of Judaism developed—and not from its “race” 
—whatever that may mean—but from the historical pe- 
culiarity of its social evolution. Precisely this historical 
evolution imparted to the Jews those qualities needed by 
capitalism, those qualities most conducive to success under 


6éW. EH. H. Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit 
of Rationalism in Europe, New York, 1910, vol. ii, p. 103. 


140 


MENTAL QUALITIES 


capitalism. The capitalist mode of production is pre- 
dominantly urban in character; it concentrates the mass 
of the population in cities, makes the provinces eco- 
nomically dependent on the cities. It transforms all of 
production into commodities production, makes all of pro- 
duction dependent on the ‘trade in commodities. It 
abolishes the handicraft routine, and replaces it by the 
application of science to all fields. 

Therefore that section of the population will make itself 
most felt within capitalism whose faculties have been best 
adapted to urban life, to trade, to scientific labour: this 
means the Jews. 

Of course, Sombart explains the capitalist spirit as well 
as the power of mental abstraction found among the Jews 
not on the basis of their urban life, nor of their commercial 
activity, but as due to the—cattle-breeding practised by 
the nomads of the desert who were among the ancestors of 
the Jews thousands of years ago! 

“Out of the boundless desert, out of the supervision of 
flocks, arises capitalism in contrast to the old established 
economic order. The management of herds has no defi- 
nitely limited domain, no clearly defined field of activity, 
for the field of cattle-breeding is unlimited ; its practice may 
be destroyed overnight, or may grow ten-fold in the course 
of a few years.” 

Sombart does not explain how he accomplishes the 
miracle of causing a herd of cattle to grow ten-fold in the 
course of a few years; and yet such a revelation would be 


141 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


very valuable as an aid to overcoming the high price of 
meat. Furthermore, Sombart appears to regard pasture 
—in the wilderness—as unlimited, as well as the fodder 
furnished by it, which manifestly must also grow ten-fold 
in the course of a few years. 

This new history of the origin of capitalism continues: 

‘“‘Hlere (in the wilderness) alone, in the cattle-breeding 
economy—never in the sphere of agriculture—could the 
idea of gain strike root. Here only could economy be 
adapted naturally to an unlimited increase of the number 
of products.” 

In other words, the idea of unlimited increase, in other 
words, of unlimited fruitfulness, could only arise in the 
most unfruitful wildernesses, never in the most fruitful 
agricultural countries. ‘The sandy desert is the indicated 
soil for the production of cattle and cattle-fodder in un- 
limited quantities. 

But the desert not only creates the possibility of an un- 
limited increase of products, but the nomadic mode of 
pasturing pursued in the desert also creates the impulse 
to increase “possessions” beyond all limits, without regard 
to whether they are needed or not. Karl Marx supposed 
that the boundless proportions attained by the desire for 
accumulating a hoard, for collecting gold and silver, were 
a result of the production of commodities. But Sombart 
knows better. It was not the production of commodities, 
but the fact that oxen and cows produce calves, that created 
the boundless impulse—in the desert—of accumulating 


142 


MENTAL QUALITIES 


hoards in cattle, of multiplying one’s holdings in cattle ten- 
fold in the course of a few years, without asking for a 
moment whether this increased quantity can be put to any 
use, in other words, for the mere pleasure of counting the 
number of heads of cattle: 

“Here only was it possible for the conception to arise 
_that the abstract quantity of commodities and not the 
quality of utility is the dominant category of economic 
life. Here, for the first time, counting was resorted to in 
economic life. But the elements of rationalism also pene- 
trated into the economic life, owing to nomad habits, which 
thus (!) become the father of capitalism in almost every 
respect. Again we find an immensely increased illumination 
for our understanding of the close relation between cap- 
italism and Judaism, the latter here appearing as the con- 
necting link between the former and nomadism.” ’ 

The “immensely increased illumination” which we find 
here serves only to illuminate the boundless fertility of the 


wilderness of our professor’s imagination. 


7 Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben, pp. 425, 426. 


143 


CHAPTER VII 


THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 


Tue mental race traits of the Jews are said to be of such 
nature as to constitute_a profound and impassable gulf 
between them and all other races. On examination, this 
information resolves itself into the fact that the great 
mass of the Jews has constituted for two thousand years 
an exclusive, hereditary caste of urban merchants, finan- 
ciers, intellectuals, including some artisans, and has de- 
veloped, by practice and accumulation from generation to 
generation, more and more of the traits peculiar to all 
these strata, as opposed to the peasant masses of the rest 
of the population. 

The Jews have always been distinguished from the latter 
since the termination of the existence of the Jewish state; 
they have always seemed strangers to the rest of the popula- 
tion, a condition encouraged in the Middle Ages by the fact 
that each vocation within the city was always concentrated 
in a certain quarter of the city. Within this quarter, if 
several races were represented, each of the races had its 
specific section. In addition, in the case of the Jews, we 
also have the peculiarity of their religion and their rite, all 
of which are matters that have nothing to do with race 
traits. But while the Jews may always have appeared 


144 


THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 


foreign, they were not always treated as enemies. Whether 
the Jews were regarded favourably or not depended en- 
tirely on the needs and conditions of the country in which 
they lived. The opposition which is frequently represented 
as a natural race hostility was determined by very mutable 
economic circumstances. 

Wherever there was need of merchants or financiers, or 
intellectuals in general, and wherever the native supply of 
such elements was insufficient, the Jew was welcome. Such 
was the case in the Christian empires of Western and 
Northern Europe in the centuries after the migration of 
nations, in other words, at precisely the period when ‘‘Ger- 
manism’? must have been in evidence in its purest form. 
Cities then developed with the utmost difficulty. The Jews 
were welcome as a means of invigorating the economic life 
of the cities. 

‘At all points where this formation of cities is going on, 
where an urban community is developing out of the former 
castellum of the Romans, the Jews contributed a decisive 
element by bringing trade within the walls. This is ex- 
pressed in a truly classic manner in the words in which 
Bishop Riidiger of Speyer opens his Charter to the Jews 
in the year 1084: ‘Desiring to make a city out of the vil- 
lage of Speyer, I have admitted the Jews... .? The 
Bishop not only points out that the Jews enjoy the same 
rights in other cities, such as complete trade privileges, 
property in land, local autonomy, but adds also: ‘I have 
thought to multiply one thousand times the honour of our 


145 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


city by gathering the Jews within its walls.’ This Charter 
was expanded into a general privilege by Emperor 
Henry IV. The Archbishop of Cologne in his Charter of 
1252 says: ‘We believe that it will redound not a little to 
our prosperity and honour if the Jews who entrust them- 
selves to our support and who—hoping for our protection 
and our favour—submit to our rule—may actually enjoy 
this protection.’ ” * 

The Jews of Cologne obtained not only autonomy within 
the Jewish quarter but full rights of citizenship and admis- 
sion to parish offices. Thus, G. L. von Maurer quotes a 
document dating from “about 1200”, in which a Jew 
named Egeberth is appointed as Alderman of the Parish of 
Saint Lorenz.” But von Maurer is obliged to admit that 
the Jews did not hold this favourable position except “for 
a time”, ‘On the whole, they had greater privileges in 
the earlier period than in the later.” ° 

For the Jews in Christendom fared somewhat as the Ger- 
mans in Bohemia. As long as they were needed in order 
to develop and encourage the growth of cities and in order 
to invigorate trade, they were welcome. When the cities 
began to develop a class of native financiers, traders, and 
artisans, the imported foreigners, once they had become 
established, were no longer regarded as a welcome as- 
sistance, but as an undesirable competition, as “undesirable 


1 Zollschan, Das Rassenproblem, pp. 351, 353. 
2 Geschichte der Stddteverfassung, vol. ii, p. 232. 
3 Op. cit., p. 230. 


146 


THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 


aliens”. The population suddenly bethought itself that 
some difference or other, of religious or other nature—the 
distinctions between races had not yet been invented in 
those “dark” ages—constituted an opposition obliging one 
to persecute the foreigners. While the Jews had been 
sought for in Western Europe down into the Thirteenth 
Century, every effort was made from that time on to make 
life unbearable for them, to abridge their rights; they were 
maltreated, plundered, and driven out, if not actually 
slain. Wherever a wretched existence is still possible for 
them, their activity is restricted in every possible way. 
They are prevented from engaging in large-scale com- 
mercial enterprises, are forbidden to own land, to practise 
a trade. Nothing is left to them but the trade of usury 
and a petty huckstery and colportage. The haggling Jew 
as a type of the Jewish “race” is a product of Christian 
charity. 

We may mention—merely as a curlosity—the fact that 
it was during this period of the most intense persecutions 
that the Jews were forbidden to visit disorderly houses. 
Thus Queen Jeanne I issued such a prohibition in 1347 for 
the City of Avignon. This pious and virtuous potentate 
reserved the privilege of visiting the bordello to Christians. 
By reason of its enduring into the Sixteenth Century, this 
privilege was transformed into a greater privilege on the 
part of Christians to acquire syphilis.* Perhaps as a 


4 Lecky, op cit., vol. ii, pp. 100, 101, especially the footnotes. 
14:7 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


measure of compensatory justice, Christians were forbid- 
den to obtain treatment from Jewish physicians. 

The reader will observe that the health of the Christians 
was not enhanced by the persecutions of the Jews. 

The rise of the modern state at first brought no allevia- 
tion to the Jews. To be sure, the state’s strong police 
power considerably abridged irregular plundering—the 
plunderings of its subjects now became the monopoly of 
the state, and were applied, with the aid of its organized 
power, in the form of taxes. 

On the other hand, this same state authority showed it- 
self to be very suspicious toward all autonomous bodies. 
Any independence, any deviation from the mode of thought 
prescribed by the state power was tabooed and often sub- 
ject to cruel penalties. Thus, the religion of the ruling 
monarch was considered to determine also the religious 
feeling of all his subjects. Where the Jews were weak and 
not numerous, their religious peculiarities might still be 
tolerated. Where they constituted a power, they were now 
most brutally maltreated by the state authority, frequently 
driven out of the country, as was the case particularly in 
Spain and Portugal. Hundreds of thousands were ban- 
ished from the former country in 1492, and hundreds of 
thousands of others converted to Christianity by force. A 
similar compulsion was carried out in Portugal shortly 
thereafter. 

It was not until industrial capital became strong that 
the general position became more favourable to the Jews. 


148 


THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 


Industrial capital arises not only in opposition to feudal 
landlordism and to guild handicraft and financial capital. 
The latter aim at attaining privileges from the state, while 
industrial capital seeks to maintain free competition within 
its ranks. The greater the competition among merchants 
and those who hold the power to grant credits, the better 
will industry flourish. It was in the interest of industry 
to permit Jewish traders and Jewish financiers to compete 
with Christians, to abolish the barriers which kept out the 
former. This attitude was fully in keeping with the general 
tendency to abolish medieval guilds. The ghetto was one 
of the medieval corporations. It had to go, in the interest 
of a speedy evolution of capitalism; though it continued, in 
some cities, into the Modern Era, its fate was sealed. 

But industrial capitalism is distinguished from the arti- 
sanry of the Feudal Era not only by reason of the fact 
that it is obliged to break down all the guild barriers, but 
also because of the fact that it substitutes an application 
of science for the traditional routine. Simultaneously 
there ensues a necessary expansion of the newspaper sys- 
tem. For these reasons, as well as for others, the enumera- 
tion of which would take us too far afield, the demand for 
intellectuals of every variety increased. But the supply 
offered by the feudal state was comparatively low. The 
Church still absorbed so many intellectuals as to constitute 
a serious interference with the demands of learning and 
capital, It became absolutely necessary for the new and 
rising mode of production to liberate the Jewish intelli- 


149 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


gentsia and to cut off the uninterrupted blood-letting prac- 
tised by the Church, particularly the Catholic Church, with 
its commandment of celibacy, on the non-Jewish in- 
telligentsia. 

In all these efforts, industrial capitalism found itself 
impeded more and more not only by feudal landlordism, 
by guild handicraft, by the Church, by the privileged strata 
among the intellectuals,.by the commercial organisations, 
by high finance, but also by the power of the state itself, 
which was ruled by these classes, and which was naturally 
applying the means of its authority in the interests of 
these classes. 

Only by overthrowing this authority could the path be 
cleared for a most speedy evolution of the new mode of 
production. In this process, industrial capitalism found 
allies only in the lower classes, in the proletariat and in 
the peasantry, as well as in those strata of the petty bour- 
geoisie and the intelligentsia which were not among the 
privileged classes and which could advance only by means 
of an elimination of all privileges. ‘Thus modern democ- 
racy arose with its pronouncement of the equality of all 
creatures in human form. ‘The natural consequence was 
an effort to emancipate Judaism, and also—on the other 
hand—an alliance between the energetic, aggressive ele- 
ments of Judaism and revolution. Only through revolu- 
tion could Judaism be liberated. 

The negative, destructive, critical spirit which is said to 
be a natural trait of the Jewish race is in reality the neces- 


150 


THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 


sary outcome of the social and political situation of Juda- 
ism, which excluded it from all the advantages of existing 
society, and made the Jews feel their disadvantages most 
keenly. If this spirit is a race trait, it is among the invari- 
able race traits of every oppressed and exploited class 
during such period of oppression and exploitation. 

The liberation of the Jews was realised in the great 
French Revolution and in its minor successors. It was 
heralded by an increasing tolerance for the Jews in the 
more advanced capitalist states, first in Holland, then in 
England, beginning with the Seventeenth Century, a change 
which brought many Spanish and Portuguese Jewish or 
pseudo-Christian capitalists to those states. Finally, the 
Jew obtained equal rights with all other citizens. There- 
upon he began to rise rapidly in capitalistic society, to 
whose needs he had become so perfectly adapted, in trade, 
in banking, in journalism, in medicine, in jurisprudence. 
But simultaneously there also began the Jew’s adaptation 
to non-Jewish society, his assimilation. 

This process was apparent in his language; the modern 
Jew no longer speaks with a Jewish accent. Then it ensued 
in his rite: the dietary laws and commandments for the 
celebration of festivals, which once separated the Jew from 
the non-Jew, constituting such a profound gulf between 
them, now cease to govern the Jew entirely. More and 
more Jews leave their religious community. Zollschan cites 
an estimate made by Licencié de la Roy, to the effect that 
more than two hundred thousand Jews were baptised in the 


151 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


course of the Nineteenth Century, not including conver- 
sions to dissenting groups or the baptisms of children 
of mixed marriages. And this tendency to conversions 
from Judaism is on the increase. In Vienna, the annual 


number of conversions was as follows: 


No. of Jews per 


Conversions from Judaism Conversion 
1886-1890 ...2.'. Sele fam 330 359 
LB SGT GOO ie Rela tce aie ane 511 288 
OOO moi ce dei(vliel bela elaLemats 607 240 
LQO Gwroals cies teene lets aad otis 643 


After giving these data, together with many others, 
Zollschan draws the following inference: 

“If we recapitulate all this material, we shall find a con- 
siderable increase in the number of Jewish baptisms in 
western countries. Judaism in Austria (not counting 
Galicia) is losing more than 2 per 1,000 of its adherents 
annually; in Germany, at least 1 per 1,000; in Hungary, 
about 34 per 1,000, to Christianity. On the other hand, 
the huge Jewish zone in Russia and Galicia is maintaining 
its ground against Christian influences and is suffering only 
slight abrasions.” ° 

Far greater than the number of Jews who abandon 
their religious affiliation is the number of those who, though 
they remain in it, nevertheless completely relinquish their 
religious practice and their religious mode of thought. Of 


6 Zollschan, op. cit., p. 475. 
152 


THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 


course, the same process is simultaneously going on among 
the great majority of the non-Jewish urban population, 
who also, by force of habit, still remain within the field of 
the traditional religious organisations, without having the 
slightest share in the religious life of these organisations. 
The religious assimilation of the Jews in Western Europe 
is making rapid progress, not so much because the Jews 
are accepting the Christian faith or the Christians accept- 
ing the Jewish faith, as because both parties are succumb- 
ing to the same unbelief and to the same religious 
indifferentism. 

This finds its expression also in the number of mixed 
marriages, which is increasing rapidly. Thus, the number 
of mixed marriages between Jews and non-Jews in Prussia 


was: 
Average for the Years SAAS 4 lb nf 
Ds oa OM arc lale chy E ol legis fol ale +: a kl'ehec eile aa 10.1 
EBM DOORN ts stalelgels agit) olyie:e ale 4. s/o" aiel es 12.4 
DESO SOOM NG Pe etate trate shore wos as eee tote aes 16.9 
OO Giactaiststavsre et ctevateeisins cinieve ketal e Bre oie at a's 23.6 
TD OGUAIN Ye ats teres aia gle elethre hearer aes Wrote Dwr ale 23.3 
DOES Mitety 5 te eee te wich Co geele Ns ols bha-rake lanaeel sane 25.6 


In the large cities with a numerous Jewish population, 
the number of mixed marriages is either already very large, 
or is rapidly increasing. 

The figures for a few of these cities are given below. 


153 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


Number of Mixed Marriages 
Between Jews and Non-Jews 
iven as a Percentage of 


City Average for the Years Purely Jewish Marriages 
Berlin 1901-1904 ir ine oles 35.4 
LOO ac estate tment setae 44.4 
Frankfort on TOO Bre eit oy ante wots ete 22.5 
the Main 19067 eee eee 26.0 
LOOT ari aw iaabetes ets ae temas 19.6 
JOOS Ter datavers late te ate neaets es 30.7 
Hamburg 19035-1905 rie ease peek 49.5 
Amsterdam B09 SOO aS ees 8.1 
LOOOVCE Tai. etnias. doko tales ts 8.8 
LOO UM iia ce ieie ee hes 11.3 
102 ate lsie it pie lemietekeatetes 13.6 
LOO. coe tere isi iatotaiene le eats 20.1 


The figures for Amsterdam especially show a rapid in- 
crease in mixed marriages. 

In Italy, France, England, and the United States, there 
are no religious statistics. Zollschan sadly observes that in 
these countries, in which the Jews have the fullest freedom, 
“the process of dissolution of the native Jewry is proceed- 
ing at full speed”.° In the Jewish families of Italy which 
belong to the higher social classes he says it has ‘almost 
become a rule to marry their children only to Christians”. 

The figures from Trieste, until recently an Austrian city, 
but which has always had a predominantly Italian popu- 
lation, point in the same direction. In Austria, mixed 


6 Zollschan, op. cit., p. 477. 
154 


THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS 


marriages were subject to considerable limitation, being 
permitted only between Jews and unbelievers. And mar- 
riages in which both the Jewish and the Christian party 
were without religious affiliation were not considered as 
mixed marriages. 

In spite of all this, the number of mixed marriages in 
Trieste, as a percentage of purely Jewish marriages, was 
as follows: 


PB UI-LBOO pee wa nce ein sige cetohele, eet 6, sieteta 33.3 
PSU LATS O BIE we statins Woaie ekecatetasstala estar elo) ares s 38.5 
PROG ES OO Uno tnicalerd sieelare evaiG es veralata's) 64s 41.6 
POO0= 1 OO BO eile ss 0 erties ore sictele a away vies sls 61.4 


To be sure, this is in the country of “black” Italians. 
But—oh, horror !—in the land of the noblest blonds, the 
“black-blond mix-up”, in spite of all the offence this may 
give to Sombart’s holiest emotions, is proceeding most 
abominably. In Copenhagen, the number of mixed mar- 
riages between Jews and non-Jews, expressed as a percent- 
age of the purely Jewish marriages, was as follows: 


TEOUSL SOUR sree is ster s ecto she vis ols aoa ore o chet ess 55.8 
BS Seed Gets a utate ale lets ata tle wel vs ere Ost ale 68.7 
DOUORT OOD ee irae cieg b ies ele tlaceiaistere » wane 82.9 


Accordingly, Zollschan declares: 
“It is apparent that the Jewish population of Denmark 
has not increased in the sixty years from 1840 to 1901, 


155 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


but has decreased absolutely and even more, relatively. In 
1840, 0.3 per cent. of the total population was still Jew- 
ish; in 1901, only 0.14 per cent. The proportion of Jews 
had therefore decreased by more than one-half. ‘The rea- 
son is not only the comparatively small number of children, 
but chiefly the numerous mixed marriages by means of 
which the Danish Jews are being gradually absorbed by 
the non-Jewish population.” * 

The examples of Italy and Denmark go to show how 
correct were the calculations of those champions of Jewish 
emancipation who expected that it would result in a com- 
plete absorption of the Jews by the races among which they 
lived. Zollschan is right; it is only in the ghetto, in a 
condition of compulsory exclusion from their environment, 
and under political pressure, deprived of their rights and 
surrounded by hostility, that the Jews can maintain them- 
selves among other peoples. They will dissolve, unite with 
their environment and disappear, where the Jew is regarded 
and treated as a free man and as an equal. 

There now remains only one possible source of a new 
lease of life for Judaism and therefore also for the “Jewish 
peril”, namely, the peril that non-Jews will be forced out 
by Jews in the struggle of capitalist competition. This 
new lease of life for the “Jewish peril” may come from 
anti-Semitism. 


t Zolischan, op. cit., p. 478. 


156 


CHAPTER VIII 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


InpusTRIAL capitalism, by means of its union with the 
revolutionary portions of the intelligentsia, had put down 
the elements opposing it. The result was a form of the 
state organisation which favoured an extremely rapid 
growth of industrial capital but also permitted the disad- 
vantages involved.in the latter for the petty bourgeoisie 
and the proletariat to express themselves most clearly. 
Sooner or later each of these two classes turned its back on 
bourgeois democracy or liberalism—the earlier, the lower 
was the degree of revolutionary energy developed by the 
latter in the period of its rise, and the less profound was 
therefore its spiritual control of the masses of the people, 
which depended in turn on the stage reached in the general 
economic evolution and therefore by the proletarian move- 
ment as a whole. The later the introduction of the bour- 
geois-democratic opposition and revolution, the greater is 
the internal resistance it feels by reason of its fear of the 
proletariat. As we travel from west to east, from England 
to Russia, we find liberalism entering later and later on 
the political arena. We find liberalism therefore growing 
weaker and weaker, being less and less capable of maintain- 


157 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


ing the proletarians and petty bourgeois in a state of 
dependence on itself, and the earlier do both these elements 
cut loose from liberalism, until finally, in Russia, we reach 
a stage where the proletariat, as well as the petty bour- 
geoisie, has already been separated from liberalism before 
it enters upon the political struggle. 

But the opposition to liberalism, assumes, as is well 
known, quite a different-form among the proletariat than 
among the petty bourgeoisie. Both find their social posi- 
tion in capitalistic society intolerable. But, in the case of 
the proletariat, the achievements of democracy and of cap- 
italist economy are the presupposition for its own liber- 
ation. The proletariat does not seek to neutralise these 
achievements of democracy, but rather to annex them, to 
utilize them in its own struggle. 

The petty bourgeoisie would have as much to gain from 
socialism as the proletariat, but only a portion of its mem- 
bers is able to rise, through its political leadership, to the 
recognition of this fact. ‘The conditions of its existence 
at the present time depend on private property in the 
means of production and on the exploitation of wage- 
labourers, particularly of the weakest of all wage- 
labourers, particularly women and children. In this 
process, it encounters the resistance of the proletariat, and 
is made to contrast sharply with the proletariat and its 
socialist tendencies. 

Considerable portions of the petty bourgeoisie, turning 
from liberalism, do not seek their salvation in advancing 


158 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


beyond liberalism, but rather feel themselves obliged to 
retrace their steps, to become politically and economically 
reactionary, in which process they find allies in the powers 
that had been surmounted by liberalism. 

Of course, they cannot turn back the wheel of Betore 
No doubt, capitalism is changing. With the issues of stock 
shares and the expansion of the banks, industrial capital 
is concentrating more and more and beginning to coincide 
with financial capital. The tendencies of the primitive 
financial and trading capital to eliminate competition by 
private monopoly are again becoming manifest. ‘The polit- 
ical reaction may for a time be encouraged by such meas- 
ures, but economically capitalism is thus being pushed to 
the extreme. The petty bourgeoisie gains nothing by such 
methods. 

Powerless to combat capitalism as a whole, it has no 
other recourse than to fight individual, partial manifesta- 
tions of capitalism and thus to join the political reaction, 
of which it expects, of course in vain, an economic reaction 
also. 

In this situation, it finds a fruitful soil for the reawaken- 
ing of anti-Semitic tendencies. The battle against capital 
as a whole seems hopeless. But the conflict with Judaism, 
with Jewish capital, which is so unpleasantly felt by many 
a non-Jewish capitalist, seems to afford better prospects of 
success. 

But not only proletarians and petty bourgeois turn 
their backs on liberalism, which has not fulfilled their ex- 


159 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


pectations, and feel themselves threatened by the rising 
tide of Judaism. The vanguard of liberalism had been 
composed of intellectuals. As long as they occupied an 
exceptional position, as long as they were an unusual 
curiosity, their position was favourable; but this condition 
gradually subsided in the course of the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury. An overproduction of intellectuals began to make 
itself felt, for which there were many reasons, not the least 
among which was the decline of the petty bourgeoisie, which 
is sending its sons—now even its daughters—to the uni- 
versity, or, if the means are not available for this, at least 
to commercial and trade schools, in order to enable them to 
make their way as clerks or as independent mental workers, 
since handicraft and petty trade no longer afford these 
opportunities. Again we find, in the most varied fields, 
that it is the Jews who advance most quickly. Therefore, 
among non-Jewish intellectuals and clerks also, those who 
are incapable of accepting socialism, which would put an 
end to all the ills of a competitive society, become quite 
accessible to anti-Semitic influences, which are an expres- 
sion of their own discontent with life. 

Thus, since the ’seventies of the Nineteenth Century, we 
again find movements in rather extensive sections of the 
population of Germany, Austria, France, etc., which favour 
a political disfranchisement, and a legal restriction or at 
least a social boycott of the Jews. Aspirations which unite 
with the anti-Jewish hatred on the part of narrow-minded 
circles and with the contempt for the Jews on the part of 


160 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


feudal arrogance, to both of which they impart renewed 
strength. 

Sombart manages to justify to himself the reduction of 
the rights of Jews in the army and at the universities: 

“The practice in all of Germany at present, in filling the 
professorships at the universities, as well as in admissions 
to the position of Privatdozent, is practically not to ex- 
clude Jews on principle, but to place certain restrictions 
on their admission or election. This may be regrettable in 
the interest of an offictally certified science, for it is always 
equivalent to an injury to the scientific performance of a 
serious institution of learning if of two competitors the 
more stupid is chosen for a certain position. But is it 
possible to consider scientific interests alone, or even pre- 
dominantly, iw filling the positions of professors at a 
university? Or, putting the question to fit our conditions: 
Would it be a conceivable and tolerable condition to have 
all the positions of Dozent and Professors at the universi- 
ties filled by Jews—baptised or not baptised—that makes 
no difference? Since the Jews are on the average so much 
brighter and so much more industrious than we, this might 
be equivalent to completely handing over the positions of 
university instruction to the Jews. . . . Perhaps the uni- 
versities will suffer more from such restrictions than the 
Jews themselves. . . . But in the long run, it is better 
thus.” * 

Well then: learning suffers more from the existing con- 

1 Sombart, Die Zukunft der Juden, pp. 82, 83. 

161 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


dition of keeping out the Jews, but nevertheless it is “‘in 
the long run, better thus”, for the universities are “after 
all”? not institutions in which “the interests of science alone, 
or even predominantly, may be considered”. They are not 
the seat of the high goddess of science, but merely stalls 
for the needed milch cattle, institutions which must provide 
so and so many posts for so and so many aspirants coming 
from good families. Therefore it would not be right to 
permit the Jews to take possession of the whole business. 
“But in the long run, it is better thus.” 

And how about the army? Here, it really appears that 
the officers will not tolerate Jews among their number and 
for so “clever a man” as Sombart that is quite sufficient. 

“The traditions followed in the army are, after all, anti- 
Semitic traditions. ... This is a fact that may be re- 
gretted but which cannot be eliminated because of this 
regret, a fact with which every clever man will have to 
reckon.” ? 

All persons who take off their hats to any obstacle that 
would require a greater exertion of energy than mere “‘re- 
gretting” apparently seem “clever” to Sombart. 

We should therefore not be astonished to find Sombart 
formulating his “programme” on the Jewish question 
“briefly” as follows: 

“The nations give their (the nations’?) Jewish fellow- 
citizens full equality of rights, and the Jews will surely be 
intelligent and tactful enough not to demand a full exercise 

2Ibid., pp. 85, 86. 


162 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


of this equality of rights at every point and to the fullest 
possible extent.” ° 

This “intelligence”’, which at one and the same time offers 
to both the Jews and their opponents everything they ask, 
to the former of course only in the protasis, to the latter 
in the apodosis, is really matchless and baffles all attempts 
to parallel it. 

In spite of all the anti-Semitism, of all the restrictions 
and disabilities of the Jews, the rise of Judaism, together— 
of course—with its dissolution because of desertions from 
the faith and because of mixed marriages, is still in prog- 
ress. ‘The data we have already given on this subject are 
all taken from the period of the renaissance of anti- 
Semitism. 

If, in spite of this fact, the effects of assimilation have 
been apparently brought to a standstill, and Judaism is 
not losing ground as a distinct racial group, we may 
ascribe this to the movement that has recently been gain- 
ing greatly in popularity among the Jews of Eastern 
Europe. 

We have seen above how the persecutions of the Jews pre- 
cisely in the days of humanism and precisely in the most 
enlightened sections of Europe made existence almost im- 
possible for the Jews, who fled to the East, to Poland, and 
Turkey. In these barbarous countries they were toler- 
ated precisely for the reason that they were barbarous 
countries which were in need of a city population. In their 

3 Ibid., p. 87. 


163 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


capacity as strangers, being tolerated merely, they must 
have been particularly welcome in the eyes of those in 
power, who would necessarily regard with disfavour a 
strong urban bourgeoisie, which would have limited their 
own power. 

In the regions then belonging to Poland and Turkey, in 
Hungary, Rumania, Poland proper, and the western por- 
tion of Russia, the Jews gathered from all portions of 
Europe, particularly from Germany. The Spanish Jews, 
for the most part, sought the southern sections of Euro- 
pean Turkey (Saloniki). The legal, and for the most 
part even the economic, situation of the Jews in Turkey, is 
at present still the best in the world.* 

Most of the Jews in the world have concentrated in these 
regions. According to figures given by Nawratzki, the 
number of Jews in the world immediately before the war 
was between 12,500,000 and 13,000,000.° 'Trieksch gives 
a higher estimate; ° he makes their total number 14,500,000 
in 1914. 

Nawratzki assigns 6,000,000 Jews to Russia, 1,000,000 
to Galicia and the Bukowina, 900,000 to Hungary, 300,000 


4W. W. Kaplun-Kogan, Die Wanderbewegungen der Juden, Bonn, — 
1918, p. 46. Valuable statistical material may also be found in the 
essay of I. M. Rubinow, The Economic Condition of the Jews in 
Russia, Bulletin of the Bureau of Labour, Washington, D. C., 1907. 
Cf. also the series of articles, Die Gkonomische Lage des jiidischen 
Proletariats in Russland, Die Neue Zeit, vol. xxiv, part 1, p. 281 
et seq. 

5C. Nawratzki, Die jidische Kolonisation Paldstinas, Miinchen, 
1914, pp. xvi, 538. 

6 Palaistina und die Juden, Berlin, 1919, p. 46. 


164 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


to Rumania, 200,000 to European Turkey, while Trieksch 
assigns 7,000,000 to Russia, 2,300,000 to Austria, 300,000 
to Rumania, and 400,000 to Turkey.’ 

In other words, about 8,500,000-10,000,000 Jews in 
round numbers were living in the domains of former Poland 
and former Turkey. Those living in Great Britain (250,- 
000-300,000) and America (2,300,000-2,500,000) have for 
the most part migrated into those countries from the 
former regions in comparatively recent days. This would 
give a figure of from 11,000,000 to 13,000,000 living in 
Eastern Europe, or coming from Eastern Europe, and of 
not quite 2,000,000 Jews of every provenience in the rest 
of the world. 

They are found most densely settled in the regions of 
former Poland, where they came directly from Germany or 
by way of Germany, with the result that they have pre- 
served to this day a peculiar language distinguishing them 
from their Slavonic environment, the so-called Yiddish, a 
corrupt German—the only Jewish population in the world 
that has not assimilated the language of its environment. 
It is in this Russian-Polish Jewish population that the 
Jew’s consciousness, or orthodoxy, has been most vigor- 
ously and actively maintained. 

Living together in such great numbers, they could not 
remain a nation of merchants, usurers and intellectuals 


7See also the estimates made by Israel Cohen, Jewish Life in 
Modern Times, London, 1914, p. 345 et seq., also the World Almanac 
for 1926, p. 698.—Trans.aror. 


165 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


alone. This was made all the less possible by the fact that 
the country in which they lived was not only economically 
backward when they settled there, but continued to remain 
so. The shifting of trade routes to India, once a land- 
route over Europe, later a sea-route, circumnavigating 
Africa, the discovery of America, the displacement of the 
economic centre of gravity of Europe to the coast of the 
Atlantic Ocean, retarded. the development not only of Italy, 
but still more that of Poland and Turkey, and thus inaugu- 
rated the political decline and disintegration of those two 
countries. Under these circumstances, no strong capitalist 
industry could develop, and the intelligentsia also were cut 
off from their relations with the mental life of the rest of 
Europe and became entirely subordinate to the servants of 
the religious rite. The entire magnificent mental growth 
ensuing upon the Italian Renaissance did not exist for 
them. They remained living in the age of scholasticism, 
in the Jewish scholasticism of the Talmud. This species of 
intellectual ability was required only among the Jews, and 
the demand for any other kind of intelligence on the part 
of the non-Jewish community was very low. Therefore, a 
large portion of the Polish Jews turned to handicrafts, 
particularly to tailoring. In the Jewish pale, in other 
words, in that portion of the Russian Empire in which the 
great mass of the Jews were alone permitted to dwell, the 
Russian Census of 1897, which was the first and last census 
carried out by the Czarist Empire, gives the following 
occupational figures: 


166 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


Per Each 100 
Non-Jews in the 


Employed in Gainful Occupations Same Category 
Absolute Number Percentages There Were 
Jews Non-Jews Jews Non-Jews Jews 
Total population .. 1,428,835 9,854,054 100 100 14.5 
Employed in Indus- 
RE Me cehe\e a's oe 6 518,075 1,182,264 36 11.5 46 
Employed in_ the 
Garment  Indus- 
BEY ae ecee iste hs ot 235,993 222,764 16.5 2.0 106 
Employed in Com- 
POT CE x d's ses 450,427 108,499 31.5 17 415 
Employed in Grain 
and Cattle Trade 202,016 57,485 14 0.6 351 


These figures are those of our own times.* In former 
days, the Jews constituted the great mass of the urban, 
commercial, and, in many cases, even the industrial popu- 
lation in the regions we are discussing. 

After the Crimean War, and during the era of liberal- 
ism which ensued upon it, a fully developed western cap- 
italism suddenly forced its way into those economically 
backward countries. Its first effect was that of mmensely 
increasing the money needs of the state, its indebtedness, 
but also its tax burdens. At a single stroke, the natural 
economy of the peasant was transformed into a commod- 


8 I take them from a book of L. Hersch, Le Juif errant d’aujourd’- 
hui, Etude sur Vémigration des Israélites de ’Europe orientale aux 
Etats-Unis de VAmérique, Paris, 1913, p. 191. This book appeared 
practically at the same time with the above mentioned book of 
Kaplun-Kogan, on the migrations of the Jews. Both books partly 
treat the same subject, with the same material, and arrive at similar 
conclusions, thus giving support to each other. Hersch goes more into 
statistical details, while Kaplun-Kogan’s treatment is more compre- 
hensive. I have found both very useful in the present study. 


167 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


ities economy, which under the given circumstances did not 
improve the operation of his farm, but rather ruined it by 
reason of a more and more intensified robbing of the soil. 
An increasing proportion of the country population was 
driven into the cities. As early as in the census of 1897, 
of the 14,800,000 non-Jewish inhabitants of the cities, 
7,300,000 had come from the peasantry.® The influx from 
city to country has sinee assumed much greater propor- 
tions. But in the cities, these persons found no quickly 
growing industry which might have been able to absorb 
them, nor did the deteriorating peasants offer any adequate 
market for such an industry. Competition grew among 
artisans and peddlers. The Jews were now oppressed more 
and more; their situation—never very brilliant—now be- 
came more and more hopeless. But the non-Jewish popu- 
lation also suffered; the frame of production was too small 
to accommodate all, and the mass of the population was too 
ignorant to seek or find a solution of these difficulties in a 
corresponding expansion of this frame, for the condition 
of economic backwardness was closely connected with the 
political backwardness, and any effort to alter the state 
authority was also connected with too many dangers. It 
was far less dangerous, far more convenient and simple to 
turn against that competition which was represented by the 
defenceless Jews. 

The state authority itself, in its various organs, met 
these tendencies more than halfway. For it felt itself 

® Hersch, op. cit., p. 229. 


168 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


threatened by the results of the economic revolution, even 
though the latter might for the present be engendering 
political opposition, not in the masses of the people, but 

only in the young men and women at the universities. The 
growing discontent was unmistakable; the heads of the 
state felt it necessary to ward it off, and the unhappy Jews 
were obliged to furnish a convenient lightning-rod. 

The anti-Semitic tendencies in the upper and lower 
strata were strengthened by the fact that in Russia, more 
than anywhere else, the Jews had escaped assimilation by 
reason of their concentration in a single region. They 
differed greatly from the rest of the population, not only— 
as we have already seen—by their rigid adherence to their 
rite, to the dietary laws, the observing of holidays, the 
peculiarities of their language,*° but also in their headdress. 
In Russia and the adjacent countries, more than anywhere 
else, the Jew has remained a foreigner among the people. 
Foreignness may be comic in its effect where it reveals 
only a difference, and is not associated with a social con- 
tradiction. But when the latter also is present, it makes 
the difference more striking and tangible, it produces in- 
citing and embittering conditions. 

Thus there arose after a short period of liberalism, and, 


10 As late as 1897, the Census of that year showed that 5,054,300 
persons of Jewish faith gave “Yiddish” as their mother-tongue, while 
161,505 gave another language. At the same time, we find 8,856 
persons of non-Jewish faith setting down Yiddish as their mother- 
tongue, obviously converted Jews—but incompletely converted. Cf. 
Rubinow, The Economic Condition of the Jews in Russia, p. 488. 


169 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


beginning with the ’eighties of the Nineteenth Century, a 
period of a most savage and intensifying anti-Semitism, 
of increasing maltreatments of the Jews by their environ- 
ment, and of a progressive disfranchisement. After 1882, 
the Jews were limited to a pale of settlement embracing 
only four per cent. of the area of the Russian Empire. 
Only rich merchants, certain intellectuals, and certain 
master-artisans were permitted to settle outside the pale, 
and within it, they were permitted to live only in the cities. 
All the Jews who had settled in the country districts were 
forced into the cities beginning with 1882, and many who 
had ventured outside of the pale of settlement during the 
liberal era were again forced back into it. 

Among those congested in this area, a terrible period of 
distress ensued. ‘The pogroms were bad enough. Worse 
were the devilish torments and extortions practised by the 
Russian authorities; worst of all was the material distress. 

In this terrible situation only the bravest are courageous 
enough to fight for a better lot. Of the others, all who 
have any means of doing so, and any prospect of obtaining 
employment elsewhere, resort to emigration; industrial 
workers therefore emigrated more than petty tradesmen. 
Particularly marked is the emigration in the overcrowded 
vocations. According to the census of 1897, there were 
147,435 Jews employed as tailors in the pale of settlement. 
From 1899 to 1910, 15,896 members of this trade emi- 
grated to the United States from the pale of settlement 
each year; in other words, 10.5 per cent. annually. On 


170 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


the other hand, the average for shoemakers was only 1960 
per year, or 2.7 per cent. The garment industry was pre- 
dominantly still a domestic industry, producing for the 
local requirements, while in the shoemaking industry fac- 
tory production was rapidly growing, and filled a market 


over all Russia." 


The Jewish immigration to America was 
more numerous than to any other country. From 1881 to 
1912, the total Jewish immigration to the United States 
amounted to 2,258,146 persons; from 1899 to 1912, to 
1,246,260 persons. The total immigration of Jews from 
1881 to 1898 was 1,011,886, of which 526,122, or more 
than half, came from Russia. From 1899 to 1911, the 
total number of Jewish immigrants was 1,165,665, of which 
831,001, or three-quarters, came from Russia. 

The Jewish emigration from Russia to the countries of 
Western Europe was far smaller than the above figures. 
According to Ruppin’s figures, the following numbers of 
Jews emigrated from 1881 to 1908. 


From From From From Other 

Russia Austria Germany Countries Total 
OMEN OTANG oll nth ales cry ¢ 150,000 10,000 20,000 10,000 190,000 
ELOPGETMANY: 6.4). a <s0ie TS.OOG R25 OOO Me armies Wun aes 40,000 
POEM TENCE On ce sien he ai 30,000 LO,0O0 Wee rere 10,000 50,000 
LEN STS Fee (hen gg A SOOO ays vou a eee eaters 5,000 10,000 


In the case of Germany and Austria, internal migrations 
of Jews from east to west were of greater importance. 
This was a portion of the general migration so character- 


11 Hersch, op. cit., p. 240. 
171 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


istic of capitalism, namely, the migration from country to 
city, from agricultural districts to industrial districts. 
The process was accentuated by the economic conditions of 
the Polish sections of those countries, which in Germany 
and Austria, as well as in Russia, though not to so great a 
degree nor in such brutal forms as the latter, were 
making a portion of the agricultural population unneces- 
sary, which surplus population flowed in part into the 
cities and supplanted the Jews or emigrated together with 
the Jews. 

In the Province of Posen (Prussia) there were still 
76,757 Jews in 1849, but only 26,512 in 1910! The 
provinces of East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania and 
Posen, together, had still 116,075 Jews in 1871, and only 
62,355 in 1910. This migration was directed chiefly 
toward Berlin. Within the city limits of Berlin and the 
Province of Brandenburg, the Jewish population grew 
from 47,489 persons in 1871, to 151,356 persons in 1910. 

Similarly, the number of Jews in Vienna increased from 
73,222 in 1880 to 175,318 in 1910, an increase of 139 
per cent., while the total Jewish population of Austria in- 
creased only 30 per cent. in the same period. In Russian 
Poland, Warsaw included in 1893 only 13.8 per cent. of 
the Jewish population of Poland (168,677 Jews, of a total 
Jewish population of 1,224,652), while in 1909 it included 
16.1 per cent. (281,754 persons, of a total Jewish popula- 
tion of 1,747,655); in 1910, the Jewish population of 
Warsaw amounted to 308,488. The Jewish population of 


172 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


Lodz tripled in the same period, increasing from 37,106 to 
92,558 persons.” 

Almost all the Jewish immigrants entering France gath- 
ered in Paris; those entering England, in London; while 
the majority of those headed for the United States re- 
mained in New York, which now counts more than 1,000,- 
000 Jews.*® 

The mere fact of its concentration in a few great metrop- 
olises necessarily has brought the Jewish population more 
and more into the foreground. This condition is further 
accentuated by the fact that the immigrant Jews are far 
more sharply distinct from their new environment and 
appear much more foreign in it than do the Jews who have 
lived in the same environment for many years. 

The new great migratory movement of the Jews is of 
entirely different type from that of former days. For- 
merly, the Jews emigrated to countries of lower, or at least 
not higher, culture. Now we find backward Jewish masses 
flowing to countries at a high stage of development, to- 
gether with Irishmen, Southern Italians, Poles and Ruthen- 
ians, or Chinese. To be sure, the Polish Jews in their 
homeland are superior in education to their environment, 


12 Hersch, op. cit., pp. 172, 309. 

13 According to the estimate of the American Jewish Year Book 
(1925-26), there were, in 1920, 1,643,012 Jews in the City of New 
York. Of the Jews, the Borough of Manhattan shelters 657,101; 
Brooklyn, 604,380; The Bronx, 278,169; Queens, 86,194; Richmond, 
17,168. About 29 per cent. of the New York City population is 
Jewish, by the above estimate; they comprise 38 per cent. of the 
inhabitants of the Bronx.—Trans ator. 


173 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


which is one of the causes preventing their assimilation 
with the non-Jewish population. But as compared with 
Western Europeans or Americans, they are on a lower 
level. 

The Russian census of 1897 recorded among male Jews 
above the age of 10, 33.4 per cent. of illiterates, while 
among the non-Jewish families of the same age-group, even 
as many as 63.4 per cent. were illiterate! But of course 
it must be remembered that the total population of Russia 
showed an illiteracy among males above the age of 10 of 
no less than 61.3 per cent., and among females of no less 
than 83 per cent! Immigrants entering the United States 
are examined as to their ability to read and write. In these 
tests, the Jews showed better percentages than were dis- 
played in the Russian census of 1897. This may be due 
partly to the fact that the American figures I am using are 
of later date than the Russian (1910,** as compared with 
1897), and also to the fact that only adults were consid- 
ered in the American figures ; perhaps also because the most 
ignorant would be most likely to remain at home. Further- 
more, the American figures included all Jewish immigrants, 
not only those coming from Russia. Nevertheless, the Jews 
appear from these figures to be far beyond other peoples 
in the matter of literacy as is shown by the following table 
from Hersch’s book.*® 


14 Hersch, op. cit., p. 91. 

15 Jewish immigration to the United States has been greatly re- 
duced, together with most other immigration, as a result of recent 
restrictive legislation.-—TransLaTor. 


174 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


Illiterates per 1,000 Adult Immigrants 


SCHMCINAVINNG As. chy cues 6a 6 0k Ain SSIOVERS oui a tes wale sasha civelss ois 240 
ROR tee Sie A sand Serius cis TW C208 ate te Vales ahd. ow ete EM aes 260 
REAR LE STE MOe tit ela Gia cates ee LEY Greeksiis W serats cae dale oe sre ats 264 
BRR tee rece CS a Nie Ge eae ed 18.“ VAR umaniangs tale de sats e selene es 340 
eC TEAS A GR AR iy Lap POR RR ty et ele civ ta ae ee Oe 354 
RN Bad alae ea ar ep ar ae 25 Croatians and Slovenes...... 361 
MCI ee ee cts trae Sh Va WUUSSIANS es etic dela tee dele eos 384 
ROMINA Or oh CS wl Sule slyly es 52 Bulgarians and Serbs ....... 4,09 
MCUCU eT fens ots « Sake eee ks Gooey AL NMAMIANSW ue es we te ele )ies 489 
PGELIMRITALANS Too su eet ales TIP Ruthenianse aot es we eats 534 
POV ARSM She kes cect 8 L149 4, Sonthern: Italians. 3 0. s «2/4 539 
NTC TTLE Sc IO ie ia a Ak LS0 bE OCLUQUCSCie tues. setae «sss 682 


Only Eastern and Southern Slavs, Southern Italians and 
Portuguese show a higher percentage of illiteracy than the 
great majority of the immigrant Jews. This condition is a 
disgrace not to the races involved, but to their govern- 
ments. The orthodox Jewish elements who flowed from the 
East to the highly developed West were quite backward. 
The first effect of this condition was to retard the process 
of assimilation on the part of the Jews of the West; a 
further effect was the reviving of anti-Semitism. The 
latter process was stimulated in two ways; in the first 
place, by the increased competition faced by intellectuals 
and traders; in the second place, by the more emphatically 
foreign aspect of the Jewish community. But anti- 
Semitism is no longer what it used to be. In former days, 
it was directed chiefly against capitalist exploitation, of 
which the Jew was considered—in anti-Semitic countries— 


16 Including also Germans from Austria. 


175 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


the most outstanding representative. Now it is more and 
more the proletarian Jew, the poor student, the poor ped- 
dler, the worker who works in his own house, who incurs 
the hostility of the anti-Semites. The times are passed 
when anti-Semitism might parade as a variety of socialism 
—“the socialism of the simple citizen of Vienna”. ‘Today, 
anti-Semitism is a phase of the struggle against the pro- 
letariat, and it is indeed the most cowardly and brutal of 
these phases; it has become “the socialist-baiting of the 
simple citizen of Vienna’. 

Meanwhile, a gap has opened up within Judaism itself; 
the wealthy and cultured Jews of the West, who have been 
almost assimilated, are in many cases unpleasantly affected 
by the new accession of their poor, ignorant “Yiddish” 
brothers from the East. They very often regard the latter 
with feelings that might be designated as an anti-Semitism 
within Judaism itself. 

Formerly, one of the most prominent characteristics of 
the Jews had been the intimate solidarity prevailing within 
their own ranks. ‘The constant persecutions had power- 
fully supported their inner cohesion, and this strong co- 
hesion had become one of the most effective means of 
resisting persecution. Although frequently represented as 
a Jewish race trait, it is—like the rest of their alleged ear- 
marks—only a product of the conditions of their life. 

With every change in these conditions, there comes also 
a change in the “race trait”. The feeling of solidarity 
on the part of the Western Jews has already been weakened 


176 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


considerably, because of—or perhaps in spite of—the fact 
that social anti-Semitism in the West (in Berlin, Paris, 
London, New York, and particularly in Vienna) has tempo- 
rarily increased. Among Jewish capitalists who have risen 
to occupy dominant positions in the existing order, the 
feeling of Jewish solidarity is but rarely in evidence, and 
when expressed at all, it takes the form of charity. Such 
charity—in view of their rapidly increasing wealth—may 
assume large proportions, but it is extended only to the 
mendicant, not to the fighting Jewish proletariat. 

' The Jewish solidarity broke down completely even be- 
fore the war, when it was needed in order to support the 
aggressive section of the Eastern European Jewry. And 
the most treacherous opponent of this stratum in Europe, 
the Czar, became an ally of the rich Jews of Western 
Europe, being supported by them with all the means at 
their disposal. 

Haman, Imperial Chancellor of King Ahasuerus, was the 
original prototype of a pogrom-instigator, and was con- 
sidered by the ancient Jews as the enemy who should be 
suspended from a gallows fifty feet in height. The Czar 
maltreated the Jewish people far more cruelly than ever 
Haman had done, but the capitalist Jews not only did not 
desire his ruin, but even supported him by means of the 
loans they granted him, thus repeatedly prolonging his 
existence. For Mordecai had become a poor tailor, and 
Esther had not risen to the dignity of a queen, but had 
been dragged off to an Argentine bordello. 


177 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


It is precisely at the time when the theory of the pure 
race is set up and the Jews are raised to the dignity of 
being the model of a pure, exclusive race, that they begin 
to present the profoundest cleavages due to class hostil- 
ities, which here coincide with a cultural hostility. The 
contrast between capitalist and proletarian Jews imparts 
to the present migrations of the Jews an entirely different 
character, as well as entirely different effects, than for- 
merly. Kaplun-Kogan has excellently characterised the 
difference in the nature of these migrations, but he has 
made the rather poor inference that the difference is based 
on their having been formerly bearers of economic progress, 
while now they are bearers of economic retrogression.*’ 

“Economic progress” means the progress of capitalism, 
and for this there are needed not only means of production 
but also proletarians. The means of production do not 
become capital until they begin to be applied by the pro- 
letarians. American capitalism could not have made its 
enormous advances within the last few decades if it had 
not been for the immense influx of proletarian masses from 
Europe. All the proletarians who set forth from an en- 
vironment of economic obstruction to an environment 
favorable to progress, and who, in the latter environment, 
place themselves at the disposal of their employers, thus 
became an element of economic progress. At first, they are 
an unconscious influence in this direction, but later they 
become its conscious agents, for their migration has made 

17 Kaplun-Kogan, op cit., pp. 58, 147. 

178 


ANTI-SEMITISM 


them more capable of struggle. And in spite of their inev- 
itable great illiteracy as a result of the Czarist barbarism, 
they were far superior in mental swiftness and in theoret- 
ical ability in the United States, as a city population, to 
other immigrants who came from the most backward agri- 
cultural districts. 

The Jewish workers’ movement in the United States is 
one of the most active pioneers of social progress. 


179 


CHAPTER IX 


ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 


Tue immense transformation in the conditions of Russia 
has not been without its effect on Jewish thought, and it 
has awakened to life the most varied aspirations among the 
Russian Jews, many forms of the ambition to defend them- 
selves against their enemies, and to emerge from their des- 
perate situation. 

In so far as these ambitions are not limited to a mere 
running away, to mere emigration, they consist in the 
effort to increase the strength of Judaism by means of 
solidarity: either through proletarian solidarity, by a 
union of the Jewish proletarians with the non-Jewish pro- 
letarians, or by means of a general Jewish solidarity, by 
uniting the powers of the Jews of all countries with those 
of the Russian Jews. 

The efforts to make the Jewish proletariat a part of the 
class struggle of the entire Russian proletariat found their 
feasible expression in the Jewish Workers Union (Arbeiter- 
bund). Jewish socialists, proletarians as well as intel- 
lectuals, played a prominent part in both the Russian 
revolutions, that of 1905 as well as that of 1917. We shall 
merely mention this fact in passing, for a complete exposi- 
tion of the circumstances would amount to writing a history 
of the Russian Revolution. 


180 


ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 


The culmination of the second tendency mentioned above 
is Zionism. 

After the first Russian Revolution (1905), a new tend- 
ency set in, aiming at a union of Zionism and socialism. 
We need not discuss this movement here, for our general 
consideration of Zionism will also pay some attention to its 
socialist phase. 

The literary origin of Zionism is in Western Europe, but 
the real need of Zionism is felt only by the Jews of Eastern 
Europe. 

The proletarian class struggle, with its socialist leader- 
ship, finds the wage workers of modern large-scale industry 
most accessible to its needs, and precisely this group of 
workers is not strongly represented among the Jewish pro- 
letarians, who furnish a larger contingent to the workers 
in backward forms of industry, working as individual mas- 
ters, as domestic workers; the Jewish immigrants in Eng- 
land and America are engaged chiefly in work done at 
their own homes.* In addition, there are numerous petty 
traders and forms of life living from hand to mouth, on 
whatever resources may come to hand, Luftmenschen, as 
Max Nordau calls them, persons living on the edge of the 
Lumpenproletariat. <All these elements—other things 
being equal—are more difficult to organise and cannot so 
easily be drawn into the struggle as the workers in large- 


1 With the gradual abandonment of the sweatshop system in New 
York, in favour of comparatively large factory centres, this condition 
may now be regarded as a thing of the past.—Trans.arTor. 


181 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


scale industry, who have been already united and schooled 
in team action by the mechanical process. Furthermore, 
the revolutionary movement had first brought about per- 
secutions of the Jews by reactionary forces in many parts 
of Eastern Europe. The Jewish intelligentsia always 
played a prominent part among the Russian revolutionary 
intelligentsia; this Jewish intelligentsia therefore drew the 
fire of the anti-Semitic reaction and because of it the 
entire Jewish community was held responsible, as a race 
rebellious by nature. For this reason the political motives 
of the counter-revolution associated themselves with its 
economic motives to increase the already considerable suf- 
ferings of the Jews. 

As a result of all these circumstances, the slogan of 
solidarity between the proletarians of all nations and faiths 
became a guiding principle only for a portion of the Jewish 
proletarians. For the slogan of proletarian solidarity the 
other sections of the Jewish proletariat substituted the 
slogan of a national solidarity of Judaism. 

Those who became tired of the struggle or felt them- 
selves incapable of fighting, but yet had still sufficient 
energy to desire not to be eliminated entirely, sought 
foreign shores. But were they likely to find an improve- 
ment in their situation by going abroad? Wherever the 
Jew—we mean the Eastern European Jew, still far from 
assimilation—may come, he is regarded as a foreigner 
among foreigners. He is nowhere certain even to be tol- 


erated. The reactionary American workers, who keep out 


182 


ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 


the Chinese and Japanese, who keep Negro workers out of 
their organisations, are equally opposed to Jewish im- 
migration, The beginnings of such an attitude are already 
apparent. The Jew is secure against oppression only in a 
state in which he lives not as a foreigner, in a state— 
therefore—of his own nationality. Only in a real Jewish 
state will the emancipation of Judaism be possible. 

This is the guiding thought of Zionism. Even among the 
circles of Western European Judaism, this idea has in 
recent years been replacing the idea of assimilation, of 
equality of rights within the existing states, which had 
until recently been dominant among the Jews. Zionism is 
coming more and more in conflict with this thought, for as 
assimilation progresses, the national Jewry loses in 
strength. It is therefore necessary to segregate Jews as 
sharply as possible from non-Jews. 

Zionism meets anti-Semitism halfway in this effort, as 
well as in the fact that its goal is the removal of all Jews 
from the existing states. 

The agreement between Zionism and anti-Semitism on 
these points is so strong, that there have even been Zionists 
who expected much gracious assistance in the realisation of 
their objects from the head of the Orthodox Russian 
nation, from the fountain-head of anti-Semitism all over 
the world, from the Czar of Russia. 

There is no doubt of the needs that serve as the basis 
of the Zionist aspirations ; in these needs lies their strength. 
But the needs may only serve as an explanation of the 


183 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


aspirations ; it may not assure their success, which depends 
on entirely different factors. 

In the civilised world all regions have been preempted ; 
there is no more room for a Jewish state. It is only outside 
of the limits of the civilised world, and only under the 
tutelage and patronage of a non-Jewish national state that 
a Jewish community is still conceivable. For a time it was 
hoped to found a colony in East Africa under English 
suzerainty, but finally thoughts have always converged on 
Palestine as the indicated home for a Jewish community. 

But, curiously enough, there had already been a Jewish 
state in Palestine, founded by Jews in exile, under the 
protection of a non-Jewish state; and even at that remote 
period—two thousand years ago—this state had not served 
as a very powerful attraction for the Jews living in the 
Diaspora. Most of the Jews chose to remain in Babylon, 
Damascus, Alexandria, Rome, and in other places of domi- 
cile, only a portion of them settling in Jerusalem. Most 
of them contented themselves with an occasional pilgrimage 
to the Holy City. They found that they prospered better 
when living as strangers among strangers than in the 
national state. 

Nothing has since been changed in this condition. To be 
sure, the situation of the Polish, Hungarian and Rumanian 
Jews is desperate, unendurable. But the question is not 
whether they could live better in Palestine than now in 
Western Europe, but whether the founding of a Jewish 
community in Palestine would afford them better oppor- 


184 


ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 


tunities than revolution in their own country. Im fact, 
it 1s very questionable whether all the Jews now living— 
though but painfully—in Eastern Europe, could find any 
opportunities for their existence in Palestine at all. 

One of the conditions for the independent existence of a 
state is that it shall include all the classes necessary for its 
process of production under the present conditions of divi- 
sion of labour. This process is based on a constant ex- 
change between city and country; a state is impossible 
without agriculture. But whence is the agriculture of the 
new Zion to be derived? 

It is, of course, absurd to maintain that the Jewish race 
is incapable by nature of engaging in agriculture. In the 
days when it was far more possible to speak of the exist- 
ence of a Jewish race than now, namely, in the period pre- 
ceding the Babylonian Exile, the Jews were predominantly 
agriculturists, as were all the peoples of antiquity. Even in 
our day efforts to make peasants of Jews have occasionally 
met with success. If such efforts have never been extended 
and followed up, this condition is due not to the fact that 
the Jews are Jews, but to the fact that they are city- 
dwellers. While the path from country to city is easy to 
follow, it is difficult to retrace one’s steps if they are to 
lead to hard manual toil and not to mere enthusiasm for 
nature and sport. Let anyone point out any large body of 
“Indo-Germanic” city-dwellers flocking to the country in 
order to earn their living as peasants or farm hands! 
Needless to say, there are none. In present-day society, 


185 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


earning one’s living in the country is associated with con- 
ditions that are intolerable for the city dweller. ‘There is 
no doubt that we are emphatically in need of a stemming 
of the present tide from country to city, both for hygienic 
as well as for economic reasons, but the conditions for such 
a reversal of the process may be found only in a socialist 
society. Even Herzl recognised this situation when he 
said: ‘Anyone who would make agriculturists out of 
Jews is a victim of a most peculiar delusion.” 7 

Herzl indeed recognised the necessity of agriculture for 
the Jewish State, but in order to find a possibility for 
Jewish agriculture he was obliged to build up an entire 
Utopia. 

We are well aware, however, that the replacement of the 
present mode of production by a higher mode of produc- 
tion can only emanate from centres in which capitalism has 
already been developed to the highest point. We are no 
longer living in times when men sought to establish socialist 
colonies in the wilderness. Industrial capitalism is the 
sine qua non of socialism. Whether it be desired to estab- 
lish the Jewish state on a capitalist or on a socialist basis, 
the capitalist structure of society will be the necessary 
point of departure and it is here that we encounter a sec- 
ond obstacle. 

How will it be possible for a powerful industry to develop 
in Palestine? There is no large domestic market. The ris- 
ing industry would be obliged to work for the export trade 

2 Der Judenstaat, Leipzig, 1896, p. 23. 


186 


ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 


from the very beginning. But even in the competitive 
struggle on the world market, an industry—other things 
being equal—can maintain itself far better if it has at its 
disposal an extensive internal market capable of absorbing 
large quantities, and furnishing the basis for the industry’s 
demand. If an industry is to become capable of meeting 
competition on the foreign market, without possessing a 
market at home, exceptionally favourable circumstances 
must be on its side. In Palestine, on the contrary, the 
conditions for the growth of industry have been as un- 
favourable as possible: the soil has thus far revealed no 
deposits of coal or of raw materials; neither ores, nor tex- 
tile substances, nor wood; it grows but few foodstuffs, with 
the result that prices of foodstuffs rise at once when im- 
migration increases; there are no transportation routes, no 
navigable rivers, no good ports, no highways; and, before 
the war, there was no railroad line of importance. 

The conditions in Turkey had not turned out to be very 
favourable for an industrial boom, and these conditions 
were nowhere so wretched as in Palestine. No industry can 
be founded on Biblical reminiscences; and Palestine has 
hitherto produced nothing in the way of other products. 
Capital, in its hunt for profits—Jewish capital as well as 
other capital—has therefore always avoided the “Holy 
Land” in spite of the eager rapacity with which it has 
penetrated into all other countries affording any prospect 
of gain. 

The Zionist state of the future in Palestine had therefore 

187 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


not succeeded before the war in making any notable ad- 
vance. According to Ruppin, 2,000,000 Jews emigrated 
from 1881 to 1908 from Russia, Austria and Rumania, of 
whom 1,600,000 went to America, almost 300,000 to West- 
ern Europe, and only 26,000 to Palestine! 

We have already mentioned Nawratzki’s work on the 
colonisation of Palestine, which is a painstaking and de- 
tailed book and which was evidently written as a labour of 
love. But the critical reader will not be able to form the 
optimistic expectations which the author draws from his 
material. 

Immense sums have been spent by Jewish philanthropists 
in order to further the colonisation of Palestine. ‘In the 
foundation of the Rothschild colonies very large sums have 
been invested by these philanthropists alone; the amount 
is estimated at about fifty million francs.” ° 

The Jewish Colonisation Association was given a capital 
of 160,000,000 marks by Baron Hirsch,* most of which 
went to the work of advancing the colonisation of Palestine. 
In addition, there was an uninterrupted flow of money to 
Palestine from many other collections and donations. 

“An approximate estimate of all the moneys flowing an- 
nually into Palestine for the above-mentioned purposes 
would reach the figure of at least 10,000,000 francs.” ° 

What has been accomplished in Palestine in the three 


3 Nawratzki, p. 495. 
4 Nawratzki, p. 100. 
5 Nawratzki, p. 109. 


188 


ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 


decades of colonising activity preceding the war, with these 
enormous money resources? One of the tasks was the 
founding of a Jewish agricultural community. “At the end 
of the year 1912, and including the settlements of the 
recently arrived Yemenites and the farm workers in the 
colonies and land groups, there was a country population 
of about 10,000.”° As compared with the total Jewish 
emigration to foreign countries, this is a mere drop in the 
bucket. 

The experiences gathered in the attempts at colonisation 
led to the following inference: ‘“The costs of a farm ‘are 
comparatively high and may fluctuate between 12,000 and 
18,000 francs per family. The necessary requirements to 
be met by a family of colonists are a sufficient knowledge 
of farming and enough money to pay for one-eighth or one- 
fourth of the cost of the farm and, in addition, to have 
enough operating capital left over for the first year’s 
operations’.” ? 

Where such wealthy and experienced Jewish peasants 
are to come from we are not told. And, therefore, this 
proposition is not one that could lead to the emancipation 
of the Jewish proletarians in Russia. 

But of course, there were also large-scale Jewish agri- 
cultural establishments which flourished. The Jewish cap- 
italist farmers had found a difficulty, however, in the 
employment of Jewish proletarians from Russia as farm 

6 Nawratzki, p. 349. 

7 Nawratzki, p. 360. 


189 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


hands: these Russian Jews are more exacting and less 
easily managed than the Arabs, for which reason the Jewish 
patriots have substituted Arab workers for their Jewish 
workers, as German patriots have frequently substituted 
Italian and Polish workers for their German workers. Since 
this device, however, conflicts with the purposes of Jewish 
colonisation, and since it is necessary, nevertheless, to 
exploit Jews as farm hands, recourse was had to the intro- 
duction of Jews from Yemen (Arabia). These Jews are 
at as low a cultural level as the Arabs among whom they 
live, are completely cut off from their European co- 
religionists, and have not the slightest connection with the 
problems of the European Jewry; but they are willing and 
cheap and therefore afford a possibility of solving the 
question of the Jewish colonisation of Palestine. ‘Within 
the last ten years, about 6,000 Yemenites have probably 
emigrated to Palestine.” ® 

No doubt this was very fortunate for the purposes of the 
capitalist Jewish colonist, but it threatened to bring on a 
bankruptcy of the policy of inducing the Jewish pro- 
letarians of Russia to take up agriculture in Palestine. 

Now for the non-agricultural Jewish population in Pal- 
estine. This population, on the whole, seems hitherto to 
have lived in wretched conditions, in many cases resorting 
to actual mendicancy. ‘This mendicancy was not a form 
of street-begging, but a drawing of alms from charitable 
institutions supported by Jews in all countries. Nor was 

8 Nawratzki, p. 441. 


190 


ZIONISM BEFORE THE WAR 


it possible for the non-agricultural population to live in 
any other way: “Industry has as yet attained no im- 
portance in Palestine.” ° 

The wages that were paid before the war may be in- 
ferred from the fact that Jewish farm hands who asked 
from 1.15 to 2 francs per day were considered too ex- 
pensive; Arabs could be had for 1.10 francs. Efforts were 
made to introduce a lace industry: “A fairly good factory 
girl gets as much as 1 franc per day!”? Furthermore, food- 
stuffs were high. The workers in the colony of Rechoboth 
had to pay about 45 francs per month for food alone in 
the years 1907 to 1910. 

It should give rise to no surprise to find that the im- 
migration to Palestine was not large and that a large 
percentage of this immigration consisted of aged persons 
who did not go to Palestine in order to work, but in order 
to live on charity, or on their own incomes, and to end 
their days in the land of their fathers. Most of the 
younger immigrants again set forth to other parts. Of the 
1,979 Jewish emigrants leaving Odessa for Palestine in 
1910, 606, or 30 per cent., were over 50 years of age. 
Data gathered in Jaffa show that m 1912 there arrived in 
that port, in addition to 350 Yemenites and 950 Bukhara 
Jews, 2,280 Jews from Eastern Europe (Ashkenazim), of 
whom only 30 per cent. were under the age of thirty.*° If 
we calculate the absolute figures on the basis of the per- 


9 Nawratzki, p. 403. 
10 Nawratzki, p. 444. 


191 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


centages communicated by Nawratzki—who does not fur- 
nish us with the absolute figures—we find that 684 young 
Jews entered Jaffa in 1912, while 790 emigrated in the 
same year. 

In other words, there were more young Jews emigrating 
than immigrating. In spite of Sombart’s “theory of the 
wilderness”, the Jew, like any other modern man, is at- 
tracted to the large city and not to the wilderness, when 
in search of a livelihood. 


192 


CHAPTER X 
ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 
Since then we have had the World War, which has by no 


means improved the economic conditions for the flourishing 
of a Jewish community in Palestine. To be sure, the 
political conditions for Jewish emigration to that region 
have apparently been improved, while the consequences of 
the war have at the same time strengthened anti-Semitism 
in Eastern Europe and thus increased the desire for a 
secure homeland for the Jewish race. 

In Western Europe and America as well as in the Central 
Powers, the Jewish population had become exceedingly 
patriotic for the most part; far from standing above the 
warring factions, as an exclusive race or nation might have 
done, they plunged into the war with the greatest enthusi- 
asm. ‘The German Jews felt that they were only German, 
the French Jews that they were only French. They hated 
each other with all the fury of the war psychosis, and did 
not consider that they had any interests in common. 

Neither of the two belligerent groups had the upper 
hand from the outset. Each was obliged to utilise every 
resource at its disposal. On both sides of the trenches, 
each government sought to obtain the full support of its 
proletarians, and also of its Jews. The cheapest conces- 


193 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


sion that could be made to the latter was in the form of 
promises to support Zionism. For these promises were all 
to be realised at the expense of Turkey. The Central 
Powers, as well as the Entente, permitted the Jews to 
believe that their victory would result in a Jewish home- 
land in Palestine. 

Therefore the war stimulated not only the English, 
French, German or other nationalism of the Jewish popu- 
lation, but also its specifically Jewish nationalism: Zion- 
ism. Now that the war is over, it appears that this 
aspiration is to be realised through the victors. ‘The 
victors, in the Peace Treaty with Turkey, assigned control 
over Palestine to the League of Nations. In the name of 
the League, Palestine is to be administered by England, 
which will encourage the establishment of a Jewish home- 
land in Palestine. Of course, this is by no means equivalent 
as yet to the establishment of an independent Jewish state, 
but it may give rise to hopes of such a state. However, 
this will be possible only if a steady stream of Jewish 
emigration turns to Palestine and there creates a flourish- 
ing community. ‘This stream would have to be a very 
generous one if it should introduce any essential improve- 
ment in the lot of the Eastern European Jews. We have 
already seen that in the twenty-seven years between 1881 
and 1908, 2,000,000 Jews emigrated from Europe, but the 
number of Jews in Eastern Europe nevertheless increased 
considerably during the same period, while their situation 
became worse and worse. In Russia, in 1880, there were not 


194 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


quite 4,000,000 Jews, while in 1914, there were 6,000,000 
or 7,000,000, an increase of 2,000,000 or 3,000,000. In 
Austria-Hungary, in 1880, there were 1,646,000 Jews, 
while in 1914, there were 2,260,000, an increase of more 
than half a million. Of the 2,000,000 Jews who emigrated, 
only 26,000 had turned their steps to Palestine; this means 
that emigration to Palestine would have to increase phe- 
nomenally if any alleviation of the condition of the Eastern 
European Jews should be expected from this source. 

The hopes of the Zionists in this field were much raised 
by a calculation made by Professor Ballod in a book en- 
titled: Paldstina als jtidisches Ansiedlungsgebiet,* which 
was written during the war. Ballod argues in this work 
against a calculation set up by the German geographer, 
Professor Philippson, who had maintained in an article 
contributed to the Berliner Tageblatt of February 9, 1916, 
which is based on the professor’s intimate knowledge of 
the countries surrounding the Mediterranean, that the stony 
soil of Palestine could not support a population of more 
than 1,200,000 persons. 

Ballod also attacks a book written by the agronomist, 
Jakob Ottinger, entitled Methoden und Kapitalbedarf 
jtidischer Kolonisation in Paldstina,* who believed that he 
was taking a very optimistic position in assuming that 
about 100,000 farming families could be established in 


1 Pro-Palistina, Schriften des deutschen Komitees zur Forderung 
der jiidischen Palistinaansiedlung, Zweites Heft. 
2 Ballod, Paldstina, p. 18. 


195 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


Palestine, affording a livelihood to 500,000 members of 
these families. Ballod considers it possible to settle six 
million persons in Palestine—not in the Palestine of 
to-day, but in a Palestine to be created on a new founda- 
tion. The realisation of Ballod’s proposals would raise 
Palestine from hitherto the most neglected corner of the 
earth to its most highly developed state. Ballod would 
establish 100,000 petty farms and 1,000 large-scale en- 
terprises, operating with the most perfect machines, and 
the most effective fertilisers, and producing in accordance 
with the most modern methods. An immense irrigation 
system will transform the arid land into a paradise. Ot- 
tinger counts on an average wheat crop of 600 kilo- 
grammes per hectare, while Ballod expects an average 
crop of 3,000 kilogrammes; in Germany the average crop 
is only 2,000 kilogrammes. Im the case of cotton, Ballod 
hopes for crops of 600 kilogrammes per hectare, while in 
the United States only 200 or 250 kilogrammes are pro- 
duced for the same area. 

But Ballod calculates that the entire immense trans- 
formation of Palestine which would make it possible to 
achieve such record crops and would make the country a 
home for 6,000,000 persons, would cost only 5,000,000,000 
gold marks, while Ottinger had calculated a year before 
that 2,000,000,000 francs would be necessary in order to 
settle half a million persons in Palestine. 

It must be that Ballod expects to pay lower prices than 
Ottinger. For instance, Ballod says: “The erection of 


196 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


ordinary houses, together with wells and cisterns and the 
necessary irrigation plants, could be carried out for 1,000 
marks.” Ottinger, on the other hand, declares: “In ac- 
cordance with previous experiences in Palestine, the 
dwelling of a worker will cost at least 2,000 francs; ... 
connecting up the farm with an irrigation system would 
probably cost 500 francs more.” * 

Even Ottinger’s worker’s cottage, costing 2,500 francs 
(including irrigation system), will hardly be a palace. 
Later Zionists prefer, however, to take their material from 
Ballod. <As late as 1919, Davis Triesch declares in his little 
book, Paldstina und die Juden, Tatsachen und Ziffern: 
“For 1,000 marks, a solidly built modest house can be 
erected. As a matter of fact, houses have recently been 
erected at this price in Germany.”* Lest the reader 
imagine that Triesch refers to the construction of bird- 
cages, he adds: ‘Houses of five rooms or more must be 
erected for 1,000 marks, depending on the mode of con- 
struction.” 

“Facts and figures” ° of this kind must cause us to won- 
der why not only the entire Jewish race but also all of 
Christendom is not found flocking to this promised land, 
whose fabulously cheap houses have a striking way of 
reminding us of its fabulously large clusters of grapes, 


3 Ottinger, Jiidische Kolonisation, p. 67. 

4 Triesch, op. cit., p. 26. 

5 Tatsachen und Ziffern, an allusion to the subtitle of Triesch’s book. 
TRANSLATOR. 


197% 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


each cluster of which must be carried by two men, with the 
aid of a pole, because of its great size.° 

But even if all of Ballod’s calculations should be correct, 
we are not informed as to the period within which they are 
to be made real. Even the far more sober Ottinger gives us 
no definite suggestions on this point. On page 100 of his 
book, Ottinger outlines a project for the foundation of new 
colonies: . 

“In accordance with this plan, in the course of about 
12 years, 30 new Jewish points of support, having an initial 
agricultural population of 3,000 families, or 12,000 to 
15,000 persons, would be established. In addition, about 
30,000 Jews of other occupations would probably be at- 
tracted into the country by reason of this colonising.” 
These colonies would require a capital of 77,500,000 gold 
francs. But the 45,000 new immigrants provided here are 
quite a different figure from Ballod’s 6,000,000. 

To be sure, Ottinger later adds that the colonisation of 
Palestine might, under favourable circumstances, proceed 
at a more rapid rate, in which connection he mentions the 
possibility of housing half a million new settlers in Pales- 
tine, but with the cautious interpolation: ‘Of course, this 
figure should be regarded as entirely hypothetical, and the 
questton as to the time required for the colonisation of such 


6“And they came unto the brook of Eshcol, and cut down from 
thence a branch with one cluster of grapes, and they bare it between 
two upon a staff; and they brought of the pomegranates and of the 
figs.”—Numbers xiii, 23. 


198 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


a number of colonists should for the present be entirely 
left out of account.” ” 

Yet, this question is by no means of little account to 
Zionism. Whatever Zionism does not accomplish in the 
immediate future, it will never accomplish, as we shall see 
later. And it is entirely impossible to throw great masses 
of Jewish colonists into Palestine in the immediate future. 

The war did not spare Palestine. The economic situa- 
tion of the country was, like that of all other countries, far 
worse after the war than before it. 

The situation in Palestine in the year 1919 may be in- 
ferred from a private letter which I have received from a 
Zionist whose name I may not divulge, but the name does 
not matter for the present. I have received confirmation 
of the contents of this letter from many quarters. The 
letter, which was written in Palestine and dated October 
30, 1919, says among other things: 

“We are no longer of our former opinion as to immigra- 
tion. . . . We are coming to the conclusion that a mass 
immigration is not only undesirable at the present time, but 
that it would be an outright cruelty, particularly for two 
reasons: 

“1. Hygienic reasons. The whole region (cities as well 
as the country districts) is infected with malaria, not to 
mention a number of other avoidable infectious diseases, 
such as trachoma (an inflammation of the eyes). Palestine 
is in need of a thorough housecleaning before it will be 


7 Ottinger, op. cit., p. 104. 
199 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


suitable for colonisation. We found many of the Jewish 
colonies or villages in the most wretched condition; every 
settler in some towns was actually either incapable of work 
or hopelessly run down. The same condition was found in 
the cities. Although Jerusalem lies above the normal mos- 
quito line, great numbers of mosquitoes are found there. 
A group of heroic young Jews from Poland arrived here 
after incredible adventures at the beginning of this year. 
We found most of them ill. The local medical station of 
the American Zionists has accomplished much; for instance, 
it annihilated the mosquitoes at Safed in six weeks, by hav- 
ing oil poured on the water in the cisterns. As a conse- 
quence of the visit paid by Brandeis, this station will 
achieve even greater things. But it will be a long time be- 
fore the country is healthy enough to receive a mass 
immigration, for the draining of the swamps will involve 
far more labour than the oiling of the tanks. 

“2. Employment. Palestine is full of Jewish beggars 
today. The Jewish population of Jerusalem and other 
so-called ‘holy’ places have been accustomed to live on the 
gifts of their co-religionists abroad. ‘These donations were 
cut off during the war and cannot be renewed now because 
of the present situation of the Jews in Eastern Europe. 
Much misery is the result. In Safed, the Jewish population 
decreased from 10,000 to 3,000. These persons were not 
accustomed to work, but they have now been converted to 
the idea and are shouting for work. New industries are 
urgently required, and we have carefully considered the 


200 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


possibility of such industries; for instance, printing, the 
production of articles used in synagogues, of preserved 
fruit, garments, etc. But you may imagine that such in- 
dustries must be built on a firm foundation if sweatshops 
and other undesirable European (and not only European; 
the factories of Damascus, for example, are said to be 
frightful) concomitants of industry are to be avoided... . 

“I know very well what this delay will mean for the Jews 
of Eastern Europe who are ready to flock into this country 
by the millions. Unfortunately, Palestine cannot, even 
under the most favourable circumstances, undertake for 
many years to absorb in any adequate way all those that 
are prepared to come. The best informed authority on mat- 
ters of the colonisation of Palestine, Artur Ruppin, has 
calculated—in a book that appeared last April, Der 
Aufbau des Landes Israel—that 20 years will be required 
under favourable conditions to increase the present Jewish 
population to 1,000,000 or 1,250,000, and that the in- 
crease in the number of Jewish workers employed in public 
works cannot be made more than 15,000 per year in the 
near future. 

‘The best authorities do not doubt that the country can 
be made to support a numerous population after the lapse 
of two generations. But this is but sad consolation for 
the victims of pogroms in our own day. But we cannot 
have our cake and eat it too. 

“If Palestine is to become an asylum of refuge, it cannot 
be a truly healthy community. If it is to be built up on 


201 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


sound economic foundations, the would-be fugitives will 
have to bide their time.” 


Since this letter was written, the economic conditions of 
the Jews in Palestine have improved considerably. Thanks 
to the active support of Jews all over the world, and to the 
energy and enthusiasm of the Jewish immigrants, much 
has been accomplished in the way of road construction, 
irrigation systems, agricultural settlements, and cultural 
institutions. An absolutely new Jewish city, Tel Aviv, has 
sprung into being, on a site that was a mere sand dune 
before the war; also, a Jewish university has recently been 
created. 

The character of the Jewish immigration has changed 
considerably. While before the war it consisted chiefly of 
beggars, who lived in many parts of the world on Jewish 
charity, it is now workers and intellectuals at the prime of 
life who are coming, able and willing to reconquer the land 
of their fathers in the sweat of their brows, and, if need be, 
by superhuman exertions. 

Anyone who has doubted the possibility of the Jewish 
people’s showing energy, resolution and intelligence in this 
crisis, must surely have changed his mind by reason of the 
work of Zionist reconstruction in Palestine. 

To be sure, the giving of such an object lesson can 
hardly have been necessary, for no one really doubts that 
the Jewish race possesses great capabilities. The point at 
issue is not whether the Jews have ability, but whether 


202 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


the accomplishments of the Jewish cultural work in Pales- 
tine may justify the assumption that this region may 
become the centre for a great emancipation of the entire 
Jewish people, may put an end to the condition of the 
Diaspora, and gather the Jews of all the world into one 
great national state. 

Our first question should be: How long will it be pos- 
sible for the Jewish rehabilitation process in Palestine to 
proceed at a fairly rapid rate? 

In view of the extremely unfavourable natural conditions 
offered by Palestine in the work of creating new arable 
soil and maintaining the excellence of that already ac- 
quired, as well as in the work of securing routes of com- 
munication, without which agricultural colonies cannot 
prosper, truly superhuman powers will be required, and the 
exertion of such efforts will deprive the workers of every 
vestige of a higher standard of living. 

Of the Jewish immigrants who have come hitherto, and 
I do not mean former peasants, or ditch-diggers, but in 
great measure intellectuals, many—impelled by a patriotic 
enthusiasm—have willingly submitted to these labours and 
privations without a murmur. 

But enthusiasm of this type has always been the special 
gift of a small group of chosen persons, and even in such 
cases it is not a permanent acquisition. The hard toil of 
the daily grind usually succeeds in soon crushing all heaven- 
storming enthusiasms, and in the long run a new social 
order cannot be built up on overwork and on exertions 


203 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


greater than those formerly borne by the individuals in 
question. 

The accessions of new enthusiasts must ultimately 
dwindle, and the ranks of those now at work will be thinned 
in the course of time. 

Even in South America, and in present-day Russia or 
in the United States, where the natural conditions are far 
more favourable, and where political obstacles to the farm- 
ing activities of the Jews are as little present as in Pal- 
estine, we have not observed that any isolated attempts to 
transform Jews into peasants have led—by their success— 
to any widespread emulation on the part of most Jews. We 
have no reason to assume that conditions in Palestine will 
be any different, once the period of the first flash of en- 
thusiasm is past. 

Already we find a predominant tendency on the part of 
the Jews in Palestine to settle in the cities. Tel Aviv is 
growing far more rapidly than are the agricultural col- 
onies. This city is now only six years old, and already it 
has 40,000 inhabitants. There were 80,000 Jews in 
Palestine in 1921, who had increased to 120,000 by the end 
of 1924. In other words, the entire increase in population 
is accounted for by the existence of the city of Tel Aviv. 
In addition, there are 40,000 Jews in Jerusalem and 12,000 — 
in Jaffa. 

Reports from the cities themselves inform us that em- 
ployment for artisans is increasing very slowly and that 
the number of vagrants (Luftmenschen) and intellectuals 


204 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


constitutes a percentage of the population that is rapidly 
increasing. 

In other words, these cities will soon be facing the same 
problem that has been encountered by the Jews in the cities 
of Eastern Europe; in fact, the problem will be a more 
serious one, for the European Jews are at least living 
among a dense population which, though not Jewish, is 
nevertheless agricultural. 

These difficulties will increase as the Jewish population 
of Palestine begins to live on its own work, ceasing to live 
on foreign philanthropy, as it did before the war. With 
the rise of a working class will come—even in Palestine— 
an increase in socialistic ideas, which will condition a sharp 
opposition of many Jewish elements to capitalism within 
Zionism. ‘These contrasts became quite apparent even at 
the last Zionist Congress at Vienna; they will necessarily 
increase and express themselves with more and more def- 
initeness. 

As this condition increases, the interest shown by the 
Jewish capitalists of the world in Zionism will lose its 
ardour. But without constant accessions of new capital, 
the Jewish work of cultivation in Palestine will not make 
much progress. 

As yet, there has never been much Jewish immigration. 
We have seen that the total increase of the number of 
Jews in Palestine was only 40,000 during the four-year 
period above mentioned; in other words, an average in- 
crease of 10,000 per year. The rate may since have risen 


205 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


to 20,000 or 30,000 per year. These figures are large 
when compared with the small area of the country, already 
holding six hundred thousand inhabitants. 

But how insignificant are these figures when compared 
with the total growth of Judaism throughout the world! 
Annually this increase amounts to ten times the size of 
the Jewish immigration into Palestine. Under these cir- 
cumstances, how could this country ever absorb more than 
an imperceptible fraction of the world’s Jewish population? 

No doubt the promised land will some day be able to offer 
work to more inhabitants than at present, once all the pro- 
jected great irrigation plants, highways, railroads, etc., 
have been completed, but the volume of the immigration 
tending in that direction will never be so great as to reduce 
in any way the number of Jews living in Europe and Amer- 
ica, and thus to solve the present Jewish question. 

At best, it might bring about the following partial ac- 
complishment: the number of Jews in Palestine may in- 
crease more rapidly than the number of non-Jews in the 
country (the Arabs) and the new Jewish state, although it 
will never embrace the great mass of the world’s Jewish 
population, may nevertheless be predominantly Jewish in 
tone. 

But even this prospect is not likely to be fulfilled. 

To be sure, the length of time that would be required by 
Jewish colonisation in order to impress a Jewish stamp 
upon Palestine would be no argument against such colonisa- 
tion, provided time were working in favour of Zionism as 


206 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


it has worked in favour of socialism; in other words, if the 
conditions for the realisation of Zionism were progressively 
improving in the course of the economic and political evolu- 
tion. But these conditions do not apply in the case of 
Zionism, and this constitutes its fundamental weakness. 
Zionism cannot afford to wait, for the political conditions 
for its realisation are rapidly becoming worse. Whatever 
Zionism does not attain within the next few years, it will 
never attain at all. 

For Zionism is not a progressive movement, but a reac- 
tionary movement. Zionism aims not at following the line 
of necessary evolution, but of putting a spoke in the wheel 
of progress. 

Zionism denies the right of self-determination of nations, 
instead of which it proclaims the doctrine of historical 
rights, which is breaking down everywhere today, even 
where it is supported by the greatest powers. 

The idea of democracy, of the self-determination of na- 
tions, is indissolubly connected with modern economic evo- 
lution, and is thus made irresistible.* This is not only true 
today for Europe, but it is beginning to be true for Asia 
also. 

The outcome of the World War might have involved a 
considerable progress in international relations, if the vic- 
tors had everywhere accepted the democratic doctrine and 
recognised throughout, as a principle, the self-determina- 


8] have discussed this subject in detail in my book, Die Befreiung 
der Nationen, Stuttgart, 1917. 


207 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


tion of nations. But they permitted themselves to be 
guided only by their love of power; they condescended to 
apply the notion of the self-determination of nations only 
at such points where it was convenient for them. Wherever 
an application of this doctrine might have strengthened 
their former opponents, they replaced it quite arbitrarily 
with other guiding notions, such as that of strategic boun- 
daries, of monopolisation of the treasures of the soil or of 
traffic routes, as well as that of historical rights, the claim 
of a nation to the restoration of the boundaries of its state 
as they existed centuries ago, under entirely different cir- 
cumstances. , 

Among the many antiquated legal claims which the little 
protégés of the great victors filed with the latter, the most 
ancient and moth-eaten is the historical claim of the Jews 
to Palestine. This claim is two thousand years old, and 
during these two thousand years the Jews have completely 
ceased to be a nation. They have not only lost their 
common territory, but even their common language. The 
only language that today might be considered a living Jew- 
ish language, namely, “Yiddish,” is a mutilated German. 
A faint tinge of Jewish nationalism is attained by this 
language only when it is set down in writing, not when it is 
spoken. It is German written in Hebrew characters. 

Palestine does not yet have a Jewish population of any 
importance as to size. The single city of New York con- 
tains fourteen times as many Jews as Palestine, where the 
Jewish population amounts to not more than one-eighth 


208 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


of the total population, of which the great majority con- 
sists of Arabs. There are 620,000 Arabs as compared with 
120,000 Jews; as economic conditions improve, the number 
of Arabs will increase as well as the number of Jews. 
Palestine could not very well be isolated from the neigh- 
bouring countries, which are entirely Arabic. 

There is hardly any possibility that the Jews in Palestine 
will become more numerous than the Arabs. But every 
attempt made by the advancing Jewry in that country to 
displace the Arabs cannot fail to arouse the fighting spirit 
of the latter, in which opposition to the Jews the Arabs 
of Palestine will be more and more assured of the support 
of the entire Arab population of Asia Minor, in whose 
eyes the Jews appear as foreign rulers or as allies of the 
English oppressor. 

It is a delusion to imagine that the Jews arriving from 
Europe and America will ever succeed in convincing the 
Arabs that Jewish rule in this country will ever redound to 
the advantage of the Arabs themselves. 

In the early days of Zionism, people were blind to this 
difficulty. Little more attention was paid to the Arabs 
than was paid to the Indians in North America, Only 
occasionally is it remembered that Palestine is already an 
occupied country. It is then simply assumed that its 
former inhabitants will be pushed aside in order to make 
room for the incoming Jews. Ballod, for instance, dis- 
cusses as follows the question of what is to be done in the 
way of claiming all of Palestine for Jewish colonisation: 


209 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


‘In the case of a mass colonisation, mere individual pur- 
chases of land from the Arab proprietors of large holdings 
would not be sufficient; on the other hand, in order that 
real-estate prices may not rise to fabulous heights, a Jewish 
chartered company must be given the right to expro- 
priate land in return for adequate compensation.” * Ballod 
also says that the petty peasants, the fellahs, will not 
provide much trouble. In his opinion, they would “gladly 
leave Palestine if they should be offered opportunities else- 
where, for instance in Northern Syria or Babylonia, if the 
latter is to be reawakened to life by large-scale engineering 
operations, to obtain better conditions”. But who is to offer 
them these “better conditions” ? 

Ballod, himself, therefore expects that there will be 
trouble between Jews and Arabs in Palestine. His book 
was written at a time when Ballod was convinced of the 
victory of the Central Powers. We therefore find him 
expressing, in a special chapter entitled ‘‘The Central 
Powers and Zionism’’, the advantages offered by Zionism to 
the Central Powers. He points out “that it is to the 
interest of Germany and Austria to have large masses of 
Jews settled in Turkey’’,*° in the first place, because this 
would mean an accession of population to their ally, 
Turkey, which would by that time have been somewhat de- 
nuded of population and resources, and in the second place, 
because the Eastern European Jews who would furnish this 
immigration would speak German and would thus help 

® Ballod, Paldstina, p. 30. 10 Ballod, op. ctt., p. 27. 


210 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


advance Turkey’s trade with the Central Powers, and, 
finally, for the reason that the Jews in Palestine would 
furnish a counterweight to the Arabs, who favoured 
England. 

But the fact now is that England has won the war, and 
the Arabs have become as burdensome to England as they 
once were to the Turks. The Zionists now present the 
reverse side of the medal and extol the Jewish colonists in 
Palestine as England’s allies against the Arab aspirations 
for independence. 

In spite of all these changes, one condition remains per- 
_manent: the dependence of Jewish colonisation on the 
victorious European great powers, and the opposition of 
the colonists to the Arabs. Both are necessary results of 
the given economic and political conditions, and each of the 
two factors gives strength to the other in rapid alterna- 
tion. Here we find the profoundest cause for the untena- 
bility of Zionism. Jewish colonisation in Palestine must 
collapse as soon as the Anglo-French hegemony over Asia 
Minor (including Egypt) collapses, and this is merely a 
question of time, perhaps of the very near future. 

The war immensely strengthened the nationalism of the 
Arabs. The English themselves aided considerably in this 
process by appealing to the Arabs as allies against the 
Turkish régime. Now they cannot exorcise the powers 
which they thus have conjured.** The spirit of national 


11 “Die ich rief, die Geister, 
Werd’ ich nun nicht los.” 
—Goethe, Der Zauberlehrling, 1797. 


211 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


self-determination is irresistible in Western Asia as every- 
where today, once it has seized the masses of the people, 
and such is the case now with the Arabs. Arabia is now 
practically independent. Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria, will 
become independent in the course of a few decades, and they 
will more and more deprive the European protectorate, 
which they must accept for the present, of all real 
authority. 

There is no longer any doubt of the final victory of the 
Arabian people; the question merely is whether this vic- 
tory is to be obtained by the peaceful method of a suc- 
cessive forcing of concessions, or by a period of wild 
guerilla warfare and bloody insurrections. The English 
mode of government points rather to the former, the French 
rather to the latter methods. In whatever way the process 
of transformation may be realised, the poor, weak Jewish 
settlers in Palestine will be the chief sufferers, during the 
battle of the Arabs for independence, as well as after their 
victory. Of all the European elements in Asia Minor, the 
Jews will be least able to defend themselves, as well as least 
capable of escape, and yet they will be treated as the worst 
enemies, because their colonising the country will prove 
that they intend to remain in it and not only make the 
former inhabitants dependent. on them but even drive them 
out entirely. 

Thus it may be considered truly fortunate for the Jews, 
who would be the sufferers, that the Zionist colonisation 
policy will very probably have great difficulty in getting 

212 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


started. We may therefore hope that the number of victims 
to the policy of Zionism will not be very great; this policy 
aims at bottom at nothing else than to transplant—at im- 
mense cost and with the greatest sacrifices of those 
concerned—enthusiastic Jews from regions in which anti- 
Jewish pogroms are subsiding, into a country where such 
pogroms are likely to ensue on a larger scale, if the Zionist 
programme should be successful to any extent that is at all 
perceptible. 

This distortion of the original intentions into their pre- 
cise opposite is inevitable whenever men base their conduct 
in the present time not on an investigation of the present, 
but on a submission to phantoms conjured up from a hoary 
antiquity. 

But the dangers to the Jews who are lured to Palestine 
by a Messianic aspiration do not exhaust all the baleful 
effects of Zionism. It is perhaps far worse that Zionism 
means a wasting of the fortunes and resources of the Jews 
in a wrong direction, at a moment when their true destinies 
are being decided on an entirely different arena, for which 
decision it would be necessary for them to concentrate all 
their forces. 

It is not in Palestine, but in Eastern Europe, that the 
destinies of the suffering and oppressed portion of Jewry 
are being fought out. Not for a few thousand Jews, or at 
most a few hundred thousand, but for a population of be- 
tween eight and ten million. Emigration abroad cannot 
help them, no matter whither it may be turned. Their 


213 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


destiny is intimately connected with that of the revolution, 
in their own country. 

The methods of the Bolsheviks are not those of the 
Western European Social-Democracy. The Bolsheviks will 
not be able to found a modern socialist state. What they 
are really establishing is a bourgeois revolution, which will 
assume forms corresponding to the social condition of 
present-day Russia, resembling in many ways the forms of 
the great French Revolution toward the end of the Kigh- 
teenth Century. Among its other effects, the French 
Revolution liberated the Jews in France, giving them full 
rights of citizenship. The same accomplishment will be in- 
cluded among the permanent achievements of the Russian 
Revolution for all of Eastern Europe, unless the Revolu- 
tion succumbs to the most savage counter-revolution. But 
the struggle in Eastern Europe now is not only a struggle 
for political freedom and for the rights of the Jews to 
change their domicile. The conditions are also being pre- 
pared for an enhancement of their economic situation. In 
addition to the emancipation of the Jews, the emancipation 
of the peasants also will be one of the achievements of the 
revolution in Eastern Europe. A more prosperous peas- 
antry will take the place of the present impoverished 
peasantry, thus creating a greater internal market for | 
urban industry. Once peace has been reestablished in 
Kastern Europe, industry, and with it transportation, will 
necessarily develop with giant strides; the urban population 
will find abundant employment and food, and the great 


214 


ZIONISM AFTER THE WAR 


mass of the Jewish population will find it possible to rise 
from conditions of life in which they have hardly emerged 
from the lwmpenproletariat, to the conditions of the pro- 
letariat in large-scale industry, as a portion of which class 
they may then take part in the upward struggle of the 
entire class. 

Herein only is there a possibility for the Jewish masses 
to achieve a truly human status. Zionism cannot 
strengthen them in this effort. Zionism will weaken them 
at the historically decisive moment by promulgating an 
ambition which amounts practically to a desertion of the 
colours. 


215 


CHAPTER XI 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


We cannot take leave of Zionism before discussing an- 
other one of its arguments, its last argument, which will 
lead us back to the question of race. 

It may appear to be a paradox, but it is a fact, that 
not a few Jews look with some misgiving on the emanci- 
pation of the Jews in Eastern Europe. They understand, 
and rightly so, that this emancipation will extend into the 
east of Europe the assimilation of the Jews that has been 
going on in the west for some time. For when the artificial 
exclusiveness of the Jews is terminated, when the ghetto 
ceases to exist, their assimilation will become everywhere 
inevitable. | 

Only in those regions of Eastern Europe in which the 
Jews were settled together in great numbers and artificially 
cut off from their environment, have they been able to 
preserve their national peculiarities. With the emancipa- 
tion of the Jews in Eastern Europe, the last reservoir still 
feeding the Jewish community of the whole world will — 
disappear, the last obstacle to its gradual assimilation. 
Judaism will then cease to exist as a separate body. 

To be sure, this process will take place under circum- 
stances which lift all the Jews still oppressed out of the 


216 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


slough in which they may still be living, into the full status 
of human beings. But Jewish nationalism regards the 
conservation of traditional Judaism as more important 
than the elevation of the Jewish individual. 

Jews who regard the matter thus are in many cases quite 
progressive in their other views. As is so often the case in 
modern society, where it is found necessary to render con- 
servative and radical thought compatible, the race theory 
plays a prominent part here also. 

It is declared to be urgently necessary to erect Palestine 
into a world ghetto, in which a great number of Jews are 
to be confined and cut off from the surrounding world, be- 
cause in this way only can the Jewish race be protected 
against admixture and preserved as a race. 

For the Jews are a pure race, and it is only the pure 
races that are called upon to achieve the highest per- 
formances. Race mixture degrades human types and low- 
ers their cultural capacity. In other words, we should be 
impelled to believe that the cultural capacity of mankind 
decreases with its increase in culture, for an increase in 
culture is synonymous with an increase in international 
communications and contacts, and therefore in race mix- 
tures also. 

One of the most prominent advocates of the Palestinian 
world ghetto as a means of preserving the race purity of 
the Jews is Zollschan. Sharp and correct though his criti- 
cisms even of Chamberlain may be, he nevertheless exploits 
without question the most untenable of Chamberlain’s 


217 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


theories, namely, the theory that exalted human qualities 
may be found only in the pure races. Zollschan says: 

““Chamberlain’s book, The Foundations of the Nineteenth 
Century, has been attacked with a vehemence that has been 
directed to but few other works; and in most cases these 
attacks were well founded. But the turning point, the 
nucleus of Chamberlain’s system, namely, his emphasis of 
the ennobling effects of race purity and of the destructive 
results of race chaos, is unquestionably sound. . . . Cham- 
berlain properly observes that the normal course of devel- 
opment is not from race to racelessness, but from a 
politically conditioned racelessness to a sharper and 
sharper definition of race, the quintessence of the race being 
expressed in the genius, the hero... . 

“Chamberlain says he cares very little for anthropo- 
logical subdivisions; ‘by race I mean that emphasis of 
specific essential characteristics and of the universal power 
of performance; that exaltation of the entire being, which 
is attained under very specific conditions of selection, 
mingling, in-breeding—but only under these very specific 
conditions, in which case it results, however, invariably; in 
other words, with the certainty of a natural law. .. .’ 

‘In the case of the bastard, the individual abilities may 
increase, while the general, ‘instinctive’ abilities (character- 
istics) disappear; precisely the latter constitute the 
potential factor giving rise to all real greatness. 

“In the case of crossing between members of widely sep- 
arate races, the constitutional type is lost in their pos- 


218 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


terity, although the latter may quite frequently be well 
equipped as far as individual aptitudes are concerned. .. . 

“Doubtless the force of heredity is far more significant 
in the case of the pure races. It is certain that in favour- 
ably bastardised races the kinetic cultural energy will 
constantly prevail, while in the pure inbred races the 
potential cultural energy will always prevail; but that only 
the latter is the fruitful soil from which the ingenious power 
of creation as well as the artistic and moral genius may 
grow forth. | 

“This distinction between inbred and mongrel races 
makes clear to us the value of race purity.” * 

It is only with ill-concealed astonishment that we can 
receive this anti-Semitic-Zionist-bastardisation of Cham- 
berlain’s pure race vagaries at the hands of Zollschan— 
otherwise an intelligent man. The race, defining itself with 
increasing sharpness, and whose quintessence is the genius, 
the hero, the race which represents nothing short of an 
exaltation of the entire being, in which the potential cul- 
tural energy will always be predominant—this is in truth a 
‘race chaos” which is based on nothing but the energetic 
use of the words “doubtless”, “without doubt”, “‘with cer- 
tainty”, which are applied the more emphatically, the less 
definite the conceptions associated with them. 

The most amusing point about the whole matter is the 
fact that Zollschan, at the beginning of his book, himself 
rejects the “nobility of race of the modern ‘Teutons as 

1 Das Rassenproblem, pp. 264-270. 


219 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


advanced by Gobineau, Richard Wagner, and Houston 
Stewart Chamberlain”, and with reason, for: 

‘Chamberlain ascertained that the Jews owe their origin 
to the crossing of three races entirely different from each 
other: the Semites, the Hittites, the Amorites. . .. The 
crossing between the Semites, Hittites and Amorites, is 
designated by Chamberlain as outright ‘incest’; in the 
destinies of the Jewish nation resulting from this mingling, 
as well as in its mental unfruitfulness, Chamberlain beholds 
an inevitable fate which necessarily intervened with the cer- 
tainty of a natural law, and from which the race will never 
be able to escape.” ° 

Yet this same Chamberlain is accepted as a cast-iron 
basis by the Zionist race theoreticians ! 

This seems absurd; yet it is quite simple; Zollschan has 
only to prove that the Jews give evidence of great mental 
achievement, of much genius, such as only a pure race can 
develop, according to Chamberlain. It will follow as a self- 
evident consequence that they must be a pure race, and it 
would be equivalent to committing a sin against the holy 
spirit of history, if one should sully their purity with a 
mingling with other races, by bastardising them! 'There- 
fore the Zionist world-ghetto becomes the necessary goal 
for all Jews! 

Unfortunately, this subtle reasoning is not a sufficient 
refutation of the fact that the Jews are a mixed race—and 


2 Zollschan, op. cit., p. 32. 
8 Zollschan, ibid., pp. 152, 153. 


220 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


not the Jews alone, for every cultural race is a mixed 
race, If only “pure races” are the native soil from which 
the “ingenious power of creation and artistic and moral 
genius may grow forth”, if the bastard races show no such 
qualities, we shall probably have to retrace our steps almost 
to the purity of the ape-man before we encounter the last 
remnants of these “generic’”’ capacities. In the case of the 
cultural races, they must have long since expired, for the 
‘“bastardisation” of these races is true “beyond a doubt”. 

The view is no doubt very widespread that ‘‘mixed races 
for the most part emphasise only the defects and vices of 
their progenitors, not their favourable points’, and Zoll- 
schan presents this view as “established today”.* But, as 
a matter of fact, this principle is as little accepted as the 
other “undoubted” truths on which Zollschan bases his 
argument in this case. | 

We have already seen that the concept of the “pure” 
race is borrowed from the realm of domestic animals. It 
loses its point altogether when applied to the varieties, to 
the geographical races of wild animals, and even to the 
races of humans, in so far as they are geographical in 
character. All the learning of our race theoreticians and 
the “sharpened glance of our day for that which is in the 
blood” are based in the last analysis merely on a constant 
confusion of the most varied conceptions of race. To 
Chamberlain’s honour be it said that he makes this idiocy 
quite clear to us. Again and again he places the experi- 

4 Zollschan, ibid., p. 264. 


221 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


ences of history on a par with the experiences gathered in 
artificial selection: 

“The history of our own race teaches us with an eloquent 
tongue what we are also taught by every race horse, every 
pure-bred fox terrier, every Cochin-China hen!” ° 

Chamberlain alleges that the Hellenic people are an 
example of this process. 

In an earlier passage,® Chamberlain observes that per- 
haps no “other question encounters such black ignorance 
even among highly educated, even learned, men, as the ques- 
tion concerning the essence and significance of the concep- 
tion of ‘race’ ’’, Chamberlain then turns against Virchow, 
who had demanded equality before the law for the various 
races and had advocated a cult of personality as opposed to 
the cult of race. 

“As if the whole course of history did not prove to us 
the close connection between personality and race, the con- 
ditioning of the nature of personality by the nature of its 
race, and the connection of the power of personality with 
certain conditions of its blood! And as if the scientific 
breeding of plants and animals did not afford us an im- 
mensely varied and reliable material, with the aid of which 
we may learn both the conditions as well as the significance 
of ‘race’. Do the (rightly) so-called ‘noble’ races of ani- 
mals, the Limousin draught-horses, the American trotters, 
the Irish race-horses, the absolutely dependable hunting 


5 Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, vol. i, p. 272. German 
edition: Die Grundlagen des XIX. Jahrhunderts. 
6 Chamberlain, op. cit., p. 264 et seq. 


222 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


dogs—do these arise by accident and promiscuity? Are 
they the result of granting the animals equality before the 
law, of feeding them all on the same fodder and subjecting 
them all to the same rod? No, they arise by sexual (sic/) 
selection and by strict preservation of the purity of the 
race. . . . A continuous condition of promiscuity between 
two prominent animal races will invariably lead to a de- 
struction of the most outstanding characteristics of both. 
Why should mankind be an exception?” 

This question can embarrass only such persons whose 
“black ignorance” is so great as to prevent them from 
distinguishing between the races of domestic animals and 
other races, and who may believe that the laws of the 
stud-farm are the universal laws of nature and of human 
history, persons who imagine that the “race” of the Hel- 
lenes and the race of Cochin-China hens were produced in 
exactly the same way. 

In the case of the latter, there is no doubt that “a per- 
manent condition of promiscuity” with another race will 
“degrade” both races. The organism of the domestic ani- 
mal is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Its 
efficiency and excellence are not estimated by its power of 
performance to the advantage of its own preservation and 
procreation, but by its utility for the specific human pur- 
pose for which the animal has been bred. Its efficiency in 
this connection will increase with its specialization, with the 
increasing one-sidedness of specific organs. ‘This one- 
sidedness is decreased by crossing a highly bred race with 


223 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


another race, presenting peculiarities of an entirely dif- 
ferent type. In this way the special value inherent in each 
of the two races from the standpoint of the purposes of 
man, may easily be decreased, and the pure race—to this 
extent—“degraded”’. 

But in the case of animals who are not domestic animals, 
efficiency must be measured by a different standard. The 
standard now becomes, not their efficiency in subserving 
the purposes of others, but their efficiency in answering the 
requirements of the preservation of their own organism and 
its own posterity. In the case of pure races, in other 
words, such races whose efficiency for a certain end pro- 
posed by man has been enhanced by a one-sided develop- 
ment, the efficiency for the purposes of their own organism 
may indeed increase by crossing the race with another and 
thus reducing its one-sided qualities. 

As a matter of fact, breeders rather frequently resort to 
a crossing of pure races, either in order to attain new race 
characteristics, or in order to infuse increased energy and 
power of resistance into an over-refined, enervated race, 
by means of crossing. 

Even Chamberlain admits the possibility of improving 
the race in this manner, by crossing. But “only very 
specific and limited blood-minglings are favourable to an | 
ennobling of a race or to the establishment of a new race. 
Here again the clearest and most unambiguous evidence is 
furnished by the breeding of animals. The blood-mingling 
must be for a limited time only, it must furthermore be 


224 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


adapted to the purpose; not all minglings, but only certain 
minglings may serve as a basis for race improvement. In 
limiting the time, I mean that the supply of new blood must 
be introduced very swiftly, after which it must cease at 
once.” * 

Continuous blood-mingling is tantamount to a “baleful, 
destructive condition, a sim against nature’, nature mean- 
ing—in Chamberlain’s eyes—fox-terriers and Cochin-China 
hens. But in the natural state there is no breeder to choose 
the breeding couples and to regulate the supply of new 
blood in such manner as to limit it to a swift introduction, 
after which the supply is cut off. Nor is man today—as 
yet—bred artificially. Humans never mated under Cham- 
berlain’s conditions. 

To be sure, man resembles the domestic animals in his 
tendency to a one-sided development owing to the division 
of labor and to specialisation. This one-sidedness is easily 
overcome in cases where callings vary from generation to 
generation. But such one-sidedness may be developed to a 
high point where occupations are hereditary. This con- 
dition will be naturally attained in cases where the one- 
sidedness of the vocation is not an adaptation to social 
peculiarities, but to peculiarities of nature, to a specific 
natural environment, resulting in a specific mode of pro- 
duction. Particularly the mental characteristics (the 
nervous system), which are of course more variable and 
more capable of accommodation than the somatic elements 


7 Chamberlain, op. cit., p. 284. 
225 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


(skeleton, muscles, etc.), may here attain the most extreme 
forms; a race of horsemen may develop into a state of 
bloodthirsty savagery; a race of farmers into a condition 
of cowardly enervation; isolated in the mists of a lonely 
mountain range, a race may develop a gloomy and fretful 
mysticism, while an active condition of social contact may 
produce—under a cloudless sky—the most frivolous and 
arrogant joy of life. A mingling of such elements may, 
under such circumstances, produce very desirable conse- 
quences. 

But such minglings may particularly be of great advan- 
tage in cases where a continuous process of in-breeding has 
imparted a pathological character to certain one-sided 
peculiarities. ‘There is hardly any doubt that in-breeding 
will not be injurious under all circumstances. But it has 
been recognised that in-breeding leads to swift degenera- 
tion where pathological predispositions are involved. Even 
Zollschan admits this, although he is quite enthusiastically 
in favour of in-breeding: 

“In-breeding—unless certain vicious conditions such as 
tuberculosis, lues, alcoholism, psychoses, have gained a 
foothold in a family—is by no means so pernicious as is 
generally assumed, even in the case of very close alliances 
within the same family. If constitutional pathogenic germs — 
are present, these will, to be sure, attain enormous propor- 
tions; but healthy constitutions are by no means ruined in 
this process.” § 


8 Das Rassenproblem, p. 266. 
226 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


The more civilisation develops, the more artificial and 
unnatural becomes the environment in which the majority 
live. The number of persons obliged to live in cities, to 
work indoors, increases; the nervous system is forced to 
develop along narrower and narrower channels. These 
conditions make the organism far more receptive to germs 
of disease. At the same time, an extending of the artificial 
environment tends to limit the effects of the struggle for 
existence with surrounding nature, to prolong the life of 
diseased organisms, to render propagation possible to such 
organisms. Under these circumstances, in-breeding must be 
particularly injurious, and a mingling of varied elements 
must be of exceptional advantage. The increasing min- 
gling of races by reason of the increase in world traffic 
may probably be considered as one of the most powerful 
factors opposing the tendency to a debasing of “race” by 
civilisation. ‘The more we turn our backs on nature, the 
more necessary becomes a mingling of races. 

Our anthropologists, accordingly, are by no means in- 
clined to regard race mixture as a misfortune—at least not 
those anthropologists who study the question of interest to 
the human race by studying man himself and not the 
processes of the chicken-coop or the florist’s hothouse. 

In the lecture delivered by Luschan at the Racial Con- 
gress, which we have already quoted several times, this 
scholar also has the following to say on the question of 
mixed races: 

“We all know that a certain admixture of blood has 


227 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


always been of great advantage to a nation. England, 
France and Germany are equally distinguished for the 
variety of their racial elements. In the case of Italy we 
know that in ancient times and at the Renaissance, North- 
ern “Barbarians” were the leaven in the great advance of 
art and civilisation; and even Slavonic immigration has not 
been without effect on this movement. ‘The marvellous 
ancient civilisation of Crete, again, seems to have been not 
quite autochthonous. We know also that the ancient 
Babylonian civilisation sprang from a mixture of two quite 
different national and racial elements, and we find a nearly 
homogeneous population in most parts of Russia and in the 
interior of China associated with a somewhat low stage of 
evolution.” 

Luschan does indeed seem inclined to regard mixtures 
between whites and blacks with disfavour. But he states 
his case cautiously in the paragraph immediately following 
the above quotation: 

“On the other hand, we are all more or less disposed to 
dislike and despise a mixture of Europeans with the greater 
part of foreign races. ‘God created the white man and 
God created the black man, but the created the 


mulatto’, is a very well-known proverb. As a matter of 





fact, we are absolutely ignorant as to the moral and in- 
tellectual qualities of half-castes. It would be absurd to ex- 
pect from the union of a good-for-nothing European with 
an equally good-for-nothing black woman, children that 
march on the heights of humanity, and we know of many 


228 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


half-castes that are absolutely sans reproche; but we have 
no good statistics of the qualities of half-castes in com- 
parison with those of their parents.” ° 

It is apparent that Luschan is very far removed from 
any acceptance of the popular conception—so carelessly 
proclaimed by Zollschan as a demonstrated truth—namely, 
that mongrels reproduce only the defects and vices of their 
progenitors and not also their virtues. 

In the case of mongrels between white races, he main- 
tains the precise opposite. As for the products of unions 
between whites and coloured people he considers the matter 
as not sufficiently proved. No writer assigns any reason 
for a worsening of character by reason of such mixture. 
Zollschan, like Chamberlain himself, admits that the half- 
castes may often excel their parents in physical strength, 
in beauty, and in natural intelligence. But both declare 
that the character suffers by reason of the mixture. Why 
this degrading of race should be expressed precisely in the 
character and not in any other trait appears to be a 
decision of fate, and one requiring no explanation. 

It is interesting to note that the defects due to a min- 
gling of races express themselves only in the domain in 
which they are least likely to be checked up. Nothing is 
more subjective by nature than our judgment of the char- 
acter of another individual. His external traits, his 
strength, his talent, are subject to objective measurement, 
but the impression made upon me by his character depends 

9 Anthropological View of Race (see footnote, pp. 22, 23). 


229 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


in large measure on whether my intercourse with him is of 
friendly or hostile nature. Any man whose reputation has 
been subjected to distortion by party hatred and party 
favour will present an uncertain image in the records of 
history.*° The same individual will present quite different 
traits in the eyes of his friends from those seen by his 
enemies. One may be the tenderest and kindliest father to 
one’s children and yet be a most ruthless usurer or slave- 
driver. On the other hand, any specific expression of 
another’s character will produce quite a different impres- 
sion on the onlooker, depending on whether the latter is 
fighting by his side or constitutes a menace to his life. 
Character may express itself only in one’s relation with 
others; manifestations of character depend entirely on 
one’s relations with others; likewise, the evaluation of these 
manifestations by third persons will depend on such rela- 
tions also. In a word, far more than in bodily stature, or 
in the strength or ability of the individual, the social factor, 
the influence of the environment, will assume the foreground 
in the impression made by his character. The factor of 
heredity appears here to be most variable and most diffi- 
cult to be isolated and recognised as such. 

But if we make an effort to ascertain the social factors 
producing the result that half-castes between whites and 
blacks appear for the most part to be of bad character, we 


10 “Von der Parteien Gunst und Hass verzerrt, 
Schwankt sein Charakterbild in der Geschichte.” . 
—Friedrich Schiller, Prologue to Wallensteins Lager. 


230 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


shall not have far to seek. We need only to refer to the 
“bastards” produced in Europe by parents of the same 
race, who are distinguished from the other children in the 
same country merely by the fact that they have been so 
unfortunate as to lack all the economic and social support 
which society and the law grant to legitimate children. 

Nor do we find that the half-castes in the colonies have 
been subjected to worse judgements than the illegitimate 
children of European parents of “‘pure” race: 

“In every respect, physically, mentally and morally, they 
constitute on the whole a debilitated, more or less degraded 
group. The mere fact that they were produced in extra- 
conjugal, illegitimate relations, becomes in their case a 
powerful cause of disease and death, both before and after 
birth, and throughout their entire lives. In the total 
statistics of disease, as well as in the mortality statistics of 
any country, they furnish, year in and year out, a very 
considerable and—we might add—constantly increasing 
contingent, both in physical as well as in mental diseases, 
mental debility, suicide, not to mention crimes of all kinds. 
Far more frequently than other groups, as compared with 
their number, they fill our public institutions, beginning 
with the lying-in hospital and the orphan asylum, and end- 
ing with the hospitals, the prisons, and the morgue.” ** 

Why should we not expect to find that the facts obtain- 
ing of these unhappy pariahs in our society are also ap- 
plicable to the half-castes in the colonies, almost all of 


11 Osterlen, Medizinische Statistik, p. 200. 
231 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


whom are illegitimate children—frequently as a result of 
the laws, for Christian governments, which know no closer 
concern than the protection of. marriage and the family, 
do indeed permit white men to take coloured women as 
concubines, but not to marry them, and to permit their 
children to enjoy a father’s care? 

It should not surprise us to find that the coloured bas- 
tards lead just as sorry a life as the white bastards, and 
this fact would by no means prove that their general back- 
wardness was due to their being of mixed extraction and 
not to their social position. But we find as a rule that 
bastards of barbarous tribes have far more chances of 
success than the illegitimate children of civilisation, which 
again does not of course prove that half-castes between 
Europeans and coloured races are of better endowment 
than children produced by two European parents. But 
their inferiority has not at all been proved. Under favour- 
able circumstances, such half-castes may even give eVi- 
dence of considerable ability. 

Thus, Ratzel, in his Vélkerkunde, speaks with great re- 
spect of the bastaards, the offspring of a mixture of white 
and Hottentot blood, who—it is claimed—have raised the 
Hottentots to a higher level. Ratzel has the following to 
say on this subject: 

“It is claimed, concerning the European half-castes, in 
South Africa as well as in India and in South America, that 
they possess the defects of both their parents, but none of 
their virtues. In all these regions so much of this state- 


232 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


ment is true, that the half-castes to be sure rarely unite all 
the favourable traits of the European father with all the 
virtues of the coloured mother. But this is due less to the 
mixture of blood than to the peculiar and hardly favourable 
breeding which these persons receive and must receive by 
reason of their situation between two widely separated 
races. It is self-evident that the care of their education 
falls to the mother, and that therefore the first impressions 
received by the young half-caste are obtained in the en- 
vironment of the lower race. As he grows up, he may be- 
come conscious of the superiority inherent in him as a 
rule—as far as his mentality is concerned, and often even 
physically—as a result of his share of the lighter blood; 
but the race to which his father belongs will not accept 
him; it will regard him as a coloured man, in spite of the 
better qualities he may have inherited as a half-caste. He 
will therefore grow up, usually, to receive less education 
and culture than his capacities would require, and it is 
quite natural that he should not be able—under these cir- 
cumstances—to make the best use of his gifts in every 
case. Superior to the coloured community in mental en- 
dowment, in energy, and often even in physical strength, or 
at least in the spirit and love of putting his strength to 
the test, he lacks the gift of contentedness with his lowly 
and oppressed situation and with the phlegmatic insensibil- 
ity to privations of every kind which are characteristic of 
his coloured brothers.” ** 

12 Ratzel, Volkerkunde, pp. 115, 116. 


233 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


In other words, the “worsening” of the character of the 
half-castes consists in their furnishing less convenient ob- 
jects of exploitation, and in their being more inclined to 
rebel against their subjection than the “pure” coloured 
race. Quite worthy of note is the judgement formed by Sid- 
ney Olivier, who, for a number of years, was governor of 
Jamaica, where there exists a considerable population of 
half-castes. In 1891, this island had only 15,000 whites, 
122,000 half-castes, and about 500,000 Negroes. Olivier 
has a very high opinion of the latter and expects much 
from their future development. But of course the whites 
are at present far superior to them. In this connection, 
the half-castes may be considered socially an element of 
great value: 

“The offspring of such breeding, whether legitimate or 
illegitimate, is, from the point of view of efficiency, an 
acquisition to the community, and, under favourable con- 
ditions, an advance on the pure bred African. For, not- 
withstanding all that it may be possible to adduce in favour 
of that prejudice against the mixed race, of which I have 
spoken, and which I have myself fully shared, I am con- 
vinced that this class as it at present exists, is a valuable 
and indispensable part of any West Indian community, and 
that a colony of black, coloured, and whites has far more 
organic efficiency and far more promise in it than a colony 
of black and white alone. A community of white and 
black alone is in far greater danger of remaining, so far 
as the unofficial classes are concerned, a community of em- 


234 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


ployers and serfs, concessionaires and tributaries, with, at 
best, a bureaucracy to keep the peace between them. The 
graded mixed class in Jamaica helps to make an organic 
whole of the community and saves it from this distinct 
cleavage. 

“A very significant light is thrown on the psychology 
of colour prejudice in mixed communities by the fact 
that, in the whites, it is stronger against the coloured 
than against the blacks. I believe this is chiefly because 
the coloured intermediate class do form such a bridge as I 
have described, and undermine, or threaten to undermine, 
the economic and social ascendancy of the white, hitherto 
the dominant aristocracy of these communities. This 
jealousy or indignation is much more pungent than the 
alleged natural instinct of race-aversion.” ** 

In spite of the favourable results of many a mixture of 
Negroes and whites, it is nevertheless easy to understand 
why investigators who are favourably disposed to the col- 
oured race may condemn a mingling between white and 
coloured. But this may hardly be considered as due to the 
laws of heredity, but rather to considerations of ethical 
and esthetic nature. 

The aversion to such mixtures is an aversion to the re- 
lations between the sexes found in regions where an un- 
married white master class has unlimited control, in the 
colonies, over disfranchised natives. Such unions in these 


13 Sidney Olivier, White Capital and Coloured Labour, London, 
1906, pp. 37-39. 


235 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


countries will not partake of the character of a free love- 
selection, but rather of that of prostitution or even viola- 
tion of the women involved. Such violent forms of race 
mixture should surely be condemned, but they have nothing 
to do with the question of heredity. 

And surely they cannot be invoked in a consideration of 
the question as to whether the Jews should be preserved 
as a pure race by artificial segregation and by an avoid- 
ance of all mixed marriages. 

We have seen that the Jews are in no sense a pure race; 
we have seen that even mixtures between widely separated 
races may be of advantage; and finally we have seen that 
mixtures between related races are as a rule of great value. 
Why should it be precisely the Jewish half-castes that have 
so disastrous an effect? On the contrary, it might be main- 
tained that no mixture between European populations is 
likely to produce better results than that between Jews and 
non-Jews. No stratum of the population has become more 
one-sidedly urban in character than the Jews, and in no 
other stratum has in-breeding under unfavourable hygienic 
conditions produced more unhappy results than among the 
Jews. 

It is Zollschan’s opinion that “in-breeding within a human 
community of ten or eleven million” has “no longer the 
slightest similarity with in-breeding within the limits of a 
small group of relatives.” But it is not true that the entire 
Jewish community lives in a single segregated region and 
that marriages take place only within this region. Jews 


236 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


in Vilna hardly regard Jewesses in Morocco or Yemen as 
possible mates. It is quite possible that the result of such 
matings might be a desirable one. But in many regions 
the Jews constitute a very small community, and the result 
very frequently is marriages between relatives, where the 
situation is such as to render impossible marriages outside 
of this community. 

It might be possible to speak, however, of another form 
of in-breeding besides that within the family. Blood-rela- 
tionship alone appears to be not a dangerous factor in 
marriage. It becomes dangerous only by reason of the 
probability that the same pathological predispositions have 
been inherited by both husband and wife and may therefore 
be transmitted to their children in an exaggerated form. 
But acquired defects may have just as much influence on 
posterity as those that are inherited, if present in both 
parents. This identity of acquired defects will most likely 
be present in those cases in which both husband and wife, 
as well as their ancestors for several generations, have been 
living and working under the same conditions. In this 
connection, it would be necessary to call attention not only 
to in-breeding within the family, but also to a vocational 
or social in-breeding. The more pernicious and one-sided 
the common conditions of labour and life of the two groups 
of ancestors, the more dangerous will be in-breeding within 
the vocation, as far as posterity is concerned; the more 
necessary a mingling with members of other vocations or 


classes; the greater the necessity, therefore—of course— 


237 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


of technical and social reforms for eliminating noxious and 
one-sided tendencies. 

Darwin also believed that alterations in the conditions 
of life, as well as the crossing of individuals who have been 
subject to different conditions of life, are of advantage, 
unless the alteration to which the individuals are sub- 
jected be too great. 

“Hence it seems that, on the one hand, slight changes 
in the conditions of life benefit all organic beings, and on 
the other hand, that slight crosses, that is, crosses between 
the males and females of the same species, which have been 
subjected to slightly different conditions, or which have 
slightly varied, give vigour and fertility to the off- 
spring.” ** 

The Jews have suffered most from a uniformity of their 
conditions of life, since they have in their ranks but a 
modicum of variety in vocation, and since they lack par- 
ticularly the invigorating influence of new accessions of 
peasant blood. And precisely in those regions in which 
they live together in great numbers, and where—therefore 
—the danger of in-breeding between blood-relations is 
smaller, their conditions of life are the most monotonous 
and unfavourable, and the dangers of vocational and social 
in-breeding become greatest for them. No stratum of the 
population has more to gain by an admixture of non- 
Jewish—more or less peasant—hblood, than the Jews. 


14 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, The Harvard Classics, 
New York, 1909, chap. ix, p. 318. 


238 


PURE RACES AND MIXED RACES 


The Jews have therefore not the slightest reason to 
avoid, because of fear of their assimilation, the only path 
to salvation that is available to them: an energetic par- 
ticipation in the class struggle of the proletariat. 


239 


CHAPTER XII 
THE LAST STAGES OF JUDAISM 


ZIONIsM is an untenable Utopia. On the other hand, 
liberalism is no longer capable—and perhaps not even de- 
sirous—of carrying out what it has neglected hitherto. 
Besides, its resources and its backing in the population are 
weakening. Wherever the liberals have not succeeded in 
bringing about a complete emancipation of the Jews—not 
merely a legal emancipation, but a real social equality of 
the Jews—it is certain that they will not be able to do so 
in the future. 

The capitalist Jews are in all countries content with what 
has been attained. Though they may not have gotten as 
much as they wished, they at least have power enough, by 
reason of their wealth, to overcome slight inconveniences. 
This was true even in Czarist Russia, and in places where 
it is not the case these disabilities do not appear important 
enough, in their eyes, to justify a risk of revolution in 
order to overcome them. The capitalist Jews themselves 
are becoming conservative and are accepting conditions as 
they are. 

The only force capable of a thorough overturning of the 
present order and of a complete destruction of all oppres- 


240 


THE LAST STAGES OF JUDAISM 


sion, of all legal and social inequality, now remains the 
proletariat, which must achieve this end in order to achieve 
its own liberation. Only a victorious proletariat can bring 
complete emancipation for the Jews; all of Jewry, except 
in so far as it is already fettered to capitalism, is interested 
in a proletarian victory. 

There is no doubt that the liberation of the Jews will be 
equivalent to their absorption to the extent to which this 
liberation is achieved. 

The centre of gravity of the Jewish question now lies in 
the great areas of former Russia. If Russia achieves full 
civil equality for the Jews, and if the country becomes 
economically prosperous and develops growing industries, 
we shall not again encounter a Jewish migration to the 
west. But this will mean that the process of Jewish as- 
similation, already so far advanced in the past, but some- 
what retarded within the last decades, will again set in. 
Even in England and America, the assimilation of the new 
strata of Russian Jews will proceed at a rapid pace. If 
the accessions from Russia cease to arrive, probably the 
second generation and surely the third generation of the 
Jews in the London East End and on the East Side of 
New York, will no longer understand Yiddish but will all 
speak English; they will no longer live in a single section 
of the city, closely congested in a few sweated industries that 
yield but slight opportunity to live, but will spread through- 
out the country and find the same opportunities as the 


rest of the population for earning a living in the most 


241 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


varied occupations. And religion will probably have be- 
come a matter of indifference to these Jews; thus the last 
barrier to their assimilation will be removed. 

This prophecy, which I already made before the war, is 
also confirmed by the observation of Zollschan as contained 
in his book printed in 1919: 

‘The second generation of the inhabitants in this country 
speak Yiddish only in their parental environment, and 
later generations speak it only in unusual cases. . . . The 
Yiddish theatre has already passed beyond its culmination. 
My questions as to the basic reasons for this condition 
always brought the answer that the second generation has 
entirely lost interest in it as well as in the language it- 
self,”? * 

In the Chinese quarter Zollschan even found two Russian 
Jewesses who had married Chinese! 

The process of the disintegration of Judaism will pro- 
ceed more slowly in Eastern Europe than in America. But 
even in Eastern Europe, the process must go on, in spite 
of the fact that the struggle for the emancipation of the 
Jews has at this moment led to the laying of greater em- 
phasis on their Jewish traits. 

Like other nations who have been ruled by a master class 
which prevented them from securing contact with modern 
civilisation, the Jews of Russia have also created a litera- 
ture in their own language, which hitherto had had no 
literature, as soon as they began to develop an aspiration 


1 Zolischan, Revision des jiidischen Nationalismus, p. 14. 


242 


THE LAST STAGES OF JUDAISM 


towards independence. There resulted the growth of a 
Yiddish literature, a Yiddish theatre, a Yiddish press, 
which in America includes great daily newspapers and 
periodicals, and had already attained large dimensions even 
in Russia when the war opened. 

“The ‘Yiddish’ daily press, after having been in ex- 
istence for ten years, exceeds the Polish press in circulation 
and in Russia is second in this respect only to the Russian 
press proper.” ” 

The productions and resources of an active national life 
on the part of the Russian Jews will become progressively 
greater and stronger as long as the struggle for Jewish 
freedom advances. But that which we call the Jewish 
nation can achieve the victory only in order then to dis- 
appear. 

The Jewish nation could maintain itself only by means 
of a living together of all the Jews in close contact with 
each other. But the callings to which the great mass of the 
Jews in Eastern Europe chiefly flock are not compatible in 
great measure with such a congestion of population. Per- 
sons engaged in these callings can prosper only when they 
are living among great numbers of persons engaged in other 
occupations, in which the non-Jewish population predom- 
inates. Precisely the compulsory congestion of popula- 
tion in a small space—which today still gives plausibility 
to the conception of a Jewish nationality—has also created 
the specific Jewish misery. With the disappearance of the 

2 Hersch, Le Juif, p. 9. 


243 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


latter will come also the disappearance of the conditions 
for a Jewish nationality. The Jewish misery can disap- 
pear only under a political and social condition of Eastern 
Europe which will impel the Jews in those regions to speak 
the language of their environment, which means the begin- 
ning of this assimilation. The latter will be further 
stimulated by the fact that in an Eastern Europe which 
is politically free, the intellectual advancement of the en- 
tire population will become one of the most important tasks 
of the state. Judaism draws its strength—as a specific 
group, segregated from its environment—from anti- 
Semitism alone, from persecution. In the absence of the 
latter, 1t would have been absorbed long ago. Counter- 
revolution might imbue Judaism with a new lease of life; 
but counter-revolution can be nothing more than a tempo- 
rary phenomenon. When the Jews shall have ceased to be 
persecuted and outlawed, the Jews themselves will cease to 
exist. 

Have we any reason to deplore this prospect? 

Our answer will of course depend on the point of view 
from which we judge the matter. But it seems to me that 
for the Jew himself the ghetto—which is the specific Jewish 
form of life—is not a phenomenon calculated to give rise 
to melancholy longings. And the friends of human progress 
have far less cause than the conservative Jew to shed a 
tear over the disappearance of Judaism. 

We have seen that Judaism developed to the highest 
point the properties of the city-dweller. ‘These are pre- 


24:4 


THE LAST STAGES OF JUDAISM 


cisely the mental properties at present most required for 
the progress of humanity. We find accordingly that the 
comparatively insignificant number of Jews in Western 
Kurope has produced an astonishingly long list of epoch- 
making minds, the proud enumeration of which would ex- 
tend from Baruch Spinoza to Heinrich Heine, Ferdinand 
Lassalle, and Karl Marx. 

But although the Jews developed as their culminating 
properties such immense mental abilities, they became more 
and more unfitted to apply the abilities they had developed. 
Until late in the Middle Ages, the Jews, like the Catholic 
Church, had constituted an element of progress; but— 
again like the Catholic Church—they have since cut them- 
selves off from progress; even more than the Catholic 
Church, owing to the narrow limits of Judaism and its 
strict segregation from the non-Jewish world, which had 
begun to widen its horizon immensely after the Fifteenth 
Century, and to pass through an era of continuous mental 
revolutions, the Jewish community ceased to participate in 
the work of progress. The Jews, restricted to the ghetto 
by their orthodoxy, remained totally untouched by this 
great transformation of the human mind; they assumed a 
hostile position to the new philosophy. ‘The spiritual 
giants produced by modern Judaism could bring their forces 
into action only after they had burst the fetters of Judaism. 
Their activities were carried on, without exception, out- 
side of the bounds of Judaism, and within the realm of 
modern culture, which is as little Jewish as it is Christian, 


245 


ARE THE JEWS A RACE? 


and often their activities were in complete conscious op- 
position to Judaism—by which we mean, as it may be neces- 
sary to point out again, not the total number of Jews, but 
those Jews who are comprised in a specific group and as 
such are cut off from the rest of mankind. Even the 
pioneers of Zionism, such men as Herzl, Nordau, Zangwill, 
make use of the so-called world languages and not of “*Yid- 
dish”. The Jews have become an eminently revolutionary 
factor, while Judaism has become a reactionary factor. It 
is like a weight of lead attached to the feet of the Jews who 
eagerly seek to progress, one of the last remnants of the 
feudal Middle Ages, a social ghetto still maintaining its 
existence in the consciousness, after the tangible, physical 
ghetto has disappeared. We cannot say we have com- 
pletely emerged from the Middle Ages as long as Judaism 
still exists among us. The sooner it disappears, the better 
it will be, not only for society, but also for the Jews them- 
selves. 

The disappearance of the Jews will not involve a tragic 
process like the disappearance of the American Indians or 
the Tasmanians. It will not be equivalent to a declining 
into stupidity and degradation, but to a rising to greater 
strength, to prosperity and well-being, to the opening up 
of an immense field of activity. It will not mean a mere 
shifting of domicile from one medieval ruin to another, 
not a transition from orthodox Judaism to ecclesiastical 
Christianity, but the creation of a new and higher type of 
man. 


246 


THE LAST STAGES OF JUDAISM 


Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew, will at last have found a 
haven of rest. He will continue to live in the memory of 
man as man’s greatest sufferer, as he who has been dealt 
with most severely by mankind, to whom he has given most. 


247 


Dd 


he 





INDEX 


A 


Abraham, eponymic hero, 73 

Adultery, 61 

Afghanistan, 71 

Africa, 36, 68, 91, 92, 166, 184, 
232 

Agassiz, Jean Louis Rodolphe, 
64 

Agriculture, Jewish, 188-192, 194— 
198 

Ahasuerus, King, 177, 247 

Alaska, 52 

Alcoholism, 131-133, 226 

Alexandria, 113, 186, 188, 184 

Algeria, 94 

America, 165, 166, 232 

Ammon, Otto, 15, 16 

Amorites, 220 

Amsterdam, Holland, 154 

Ancona sheep, 24 

Andrée, Richard, 90 

Anglo-Saxons, 66 

Animals, see Domestic Animals, 
Wild Animals 

Antelopes, survival of, 36 

Anthropology, passim 

Anthropo-sociologists, 20 

Anthropozoon biblicum, 71 

Anti-Semitism, passim 

Anti-vaccinationists, see Vacci- 
nation 

Apes, see Monkeys 

Aguiline nose, see Nose 

Arabia, 108, 109, 212 

Arabs, the, 12, 68, 134, 140, 191, 
206, 210, 211 


Argentina, 177 

Armenians, the, 73, 108 

Armenoids, the, 73, 108, 109, 127 

Artificial selection, 27, 28, 139 

Aryans, the, 15, 66, 86, 108, 125 

Ashkenazim, 191 

Asia, 71-74, 82, 91, 207, 211, 212 

Assyrian monuments, 27 

Auerbach, physician, 101 

Austria, 152, 154, 160, 172, 175, 
footnote, 210 

Australia, 71, 72 

Avignon, France, 147 


4 


B 


Babylon, ancient city, 184 

Babylonia, 210, 228 

Babylonian Exile, 185 

Baden, German province, 15, 16 

Ballod, Professor Karl, 195-198, 
210 

Barbary lion, 32 

Bavaria, 92, 93, 107 

Belgium, 171 

Beluchistan, 71 

Berlin, Germany, 99, 100, 153, 
LIZ TT 

Berliner Tageblatt, 195 

Bernard, Samuel, 123 

Biology, 19 

Bismarck, Prince, 68 

Blond type, 93, 94 

Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 
64, 90 

Boas, Franz, 42 

Body plasm, 37, 39 


INDEX 


Bohemia, Germans in, 146 

Bohemians, 86 

Bokhara, 94, 191 

Bolsheviks, see Russian Revolu- 
tion of 1917 

Bordello, visits to, 147, 177 

Bornhak, Konrad, 14, 15 

Botany, 21 

Bourgeois democracy, 157, 207 

Brachycephalic, 15, 95 

Brandeis, Louis Dembitz, 200 

Brandenburg, province of, 172 

Bronx, number of Jews, 173, 
footnote 

Brooklyn, number of Jews, 173, 
footnote 

Brehm, Alfred Edmund, 32 

Breslau, Germany, 99 

Brunette type, 93, 94 

Budapest, Hungary, 101 

Buffon, Georges Louis\Leclere, 64 

Bukovina, 164 

Bulgarians, 175 

Burke, Robert O’Hara, 65 


C 


Cesar, Julius, 75 

Cape lion, 32 

Capitalism, 12, 77, 126, 140-143, 
187 

Caricatures of Jews, 121 

Carinthia, 74 

Carpathian mountains, 96, 120 

Cartoons of Jews, see Caricatures 

Caste, 58 

Catholic Church, the, 14, 117, 189, 
149, 150, 245 

Cats, domestic, 25 

Cattle-breeding, 141 

Celebes, 71, 72 

Celibacy, 60, 139 

Celtic race, 14, 15, 66 


Cephalic index, see Skull, shape 
of 

Ceylon, see Singhalese 

Chamberlain, Houston Stuart, 
123, 124, 217-226 

Chest measurement, 97 

Chinese, 54, 78, 1738, 183, 228 

Christ Jesus, 114 

Christianity, 126, 139, 147, 148, 
245, 246 

Cities, rise of, 145-147 

City populations distinguished 
from peasantry, 1380-135 

Civil War, U. S. A., 70 

Class stratification, 58, 60, 61 

Cochin-China hens, 222, 223, 225 

Coen, East Indian Governor, 122 

Cohen, Israel, 164 

Cohn vs. Coen, see Coen 

Coiffure, 120, 121 

Cologne, Germany, 146 

Colonial policy, 13, 14, 122, 188- 
192, 194-198 

Commerce, Jews in, 140, 147, 167 

Cook, Capt. James, 58 

Copenhagen, Denmark, 155 

Cotton, in Palestine, 196 

Crawfurd, anthropologist, 65 

Cretan civilisation, 228 

Croatians, 175 

Crusades, the, 12 

Czechs, 175 


D 


Damascus, 184, 200 

Darwin, Charles, 25, 26, 31, 34, 
35, 37, 44, 45, 64, 65, 76, 237 

Darwinism, 13, 31, 37 

Degeneration, 226 

De la Roy Licencié, 151 

Democracy, see Bourgeois de- 
mocracy 


INDEX 


Denmark, 155, 156 

Desmoulins, Charles, 64, 65 

Diabetes, 101, 102 

Diaspora, 184 

Diseases, “Jewish,” 101-103, 226 

Dolichocephalic, 15, 95 

Domestic animals, 20-25, 60, 222— 
226 

Driesmans, Heinrich, 15 


i 


Egeberth, Jew of Cologne, 146 

Egypt, 110, 112, 211, 212 

Egyptian monuments, 27 

Elbe, river, 120 

Employment, in Palestine, 200, 
201 

Engels, Friedrich, 123 

England, 86, 107, 117, 154, 157, 
171, 173, 175, 184, 211, 212, 228 

Environment, effect of, 42, 43, 
46, 47, 49 

Eskimos, 121 

Esther, 177 

Evolution, 18, 27, 28, 50, 76 

Eyes, colour of, 40, 65, 93 


F 


Farmers, see Agriculture 

Fecundity of the Jews, 98-100 

Fellahs, 210 

Fidelity of wives, 61, 118 

Finns, 175 

Fischer, Kuno, 139, footnote 

Fishberg, Maurice, 18, 42, 90-96, 
98, 99, 104, 127 

Forster, George, 58 

Foundations of Christianity, by 
Karl Kautsky, 113-115, 117, 
137, 138 

Foundations of the Nineteenth 
Century, see Chamberlain, 
Houston Stuart 


Fox-terriers, 225 

France, 86, 99, 121-123, 154, 160, 
171, 178, 193, 211, 214, 228 

Frankfort-on-the-Main, 153 

Freemasonry, 115 

French, the, 175 

French Revolution, 15, 151, 214 

Freytag, Gustav, 105 


G 


Galicia, Poland, 152 

Garment industries, Jews in, 167 

Geology, 31 

Germ plasm, 37, 39 

German language, see Yiddish, 
and Wagner, Richard 

Germanic race, see Teutonic race 

Germany, 99, 100, 102, 103, 107, 
152-154, 160, 165, 171, 172, 175, 
193, 196, 197, 210, 228 

Ghetto, the, 117, 118, 144, 149, 
156, 217-245, 246 

Gibraltar, 72 

Gobineau, Comte Joseph Arthur 
de, 220 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 
211, footnote 

Gorilla, 70 

Gotha, German city, 42 

Grapes, in Palestine, 197 

Graubiinden, 74 

Great Britain, 165 

Greek language, 65, 66, 68, 69, 
113 

Guttmann, Julius, 123 

Guzerat lion, 32 


H 


Hickel, Ernst, 65, 76 

Hair, color of, 40, 65, 93, 120 
Haman, Imperial chancellor, 177 
Hamburg, Germany, 154 


INDEX 


Hammerstein, Wilhelm Freiherr 
von, 124 

Hard water, effect on stature, 42 

Hare, survival of the, 29, 32, 35 

Harem, the, 61 

Hebrew language, 113, 208 

Heine, Heinrich, 245 

Hens, transplantation of ovaries, 
38, 39 

Hellenes, the, 223 

Henry IV, German Emperor, 
146 

Hepner, L., 18 

Heredity, 19, 39, 40, 59, 287 

Hersch, L., 167, 168, 171, 174 

Hertz, 15, 18 

Herzl, Theodor, 186, 246 

Hindus, the, 68 

Hirsch, Baron, 188 

Hittites, the, 73, 220 

Holland, 122, 151, 175 

Homo alpinus, 130 

Hottentots, the, 231 

Houzé, Dr. E., 66 

Hungarians, 86 

Hungary, 96, 152, 164, 184 

Hunter, anthropologist, 64 


I 


Illegitimacy, see Legitimacy 

Illiteracy, 174, 175 

Immigration, 42, 91, 171, 174, 175, 
203, 205 

Inbreeding, 61, 226 

India, 166, 232 

Indians, American, %3, 85, 92, 
246 

Indo-Europeans, see Aryans 

Indo-Germanic race, 185 


Intellectuals, overproduction of, 


160 
Intermarriage, 153-156 


252 


Irishmen, 173, 175 

Isaac, son of promise, 110 

Italy, 86, 94, 102, 154, 156, 166, 
173, 175, 228 


J 


Jacquinot, anthropologist, 64 
Jaffa, 191, 192, 204 
Jamaica, island of, 234, 235 
Java, 32 

Japanese, the, 69, 82, 183 
Jeanne I, Queen of France, 147 
Jerusalem, 184, 204 

Jesus Christ, 114 

Jewry, passim 

Jews, the, passim 

Joseph’s marriage, lil 
Judah’s marriage, 111 
Judaism, passim 

Julius Cesar, 75 


K 


Kant, Immanuel, 64, 76 

Kaplun-Kogan, W. W., 164, 167, 
footnote 

Kautsky, Karl, 18, 113-115, 117, 
1387, 1388, 207 

Keltic race, see Celtic race 

Kentucky, 42 - 

Kishineff massacre, 130, foot- 
note 

Kobelt, Wilhelm, 31 

Kreuzzeitung, Berlin daily, 124 

Kropina, 72 


L 


Lamarck, Jean Baptiste Pierre, 
34 

Language a criterion of race, 
65-67, 103-108, 150 


INDEX 


Lassalle, Ferdinand, 245 

Law, John, 122 

Lecky, W. E. H., 140, 147 

Legal disabilities, 118, 147 

Legitimate offspring, 60, 231 

Liberalism, 157, 167, 240 

Limousin draught horses, 222 

Lions, classification of, 32, 36 

Lithuania, 96 

Lithuanians, 175 

Lodz, Poland, 173 

London, England, 173, 177, 241 

Louis XIV, King of France, 123 

Louis XV, King of France, 123 

Low German language, 66 

Luschan, Felix von, 68-75, 92, 
227-229 


M 


Magyars, 175 

Maimon, Salomon, 139 

Malthus, Thomas Robert, 35 

Manchuria, 68 

Manhattan, number of Jews, 173, 
footnote 

Marriages, Jewish, 139 

Marx, Karl, 79, 128, 142, 245 

Mauchamp sheep, 24 

Maurer, Georg L. von, 146 

Mauscheln, 104 

Medicine, Jews in, 138, 140, 148 

Menstruation, 97 

Merchants, Jews as, 133-137 

Mesopotamia, 109, 112, 212 

Meyer, Eduard, 87, 109 

Milieu, effect of, see Environ- 
ment 

Mimicry, 29 

Mongolians, 43, 81 

Monkeys, 45, 46 

Moors, the, 140 

Mordecai, 177 


253 


Morocco, 237 

Mortality statistics, 100, 101 
Morton, Samuel George, 65 
Moustier, 72 

Munich, Bavaria, 107 
Music, Jews in, 104-106 


N 


Natural selection, 15, 26, 223 

Nawratzki, C., 164, 188-192 

Neandertal, 72, 74 

Negroes, 43, 54, 66, 68, 70, 75, 
16,) 84, 85, 87; 121, 7188; 234, 
235 

New York City, 42, 91, 173, 177, 
208, 209, 241 

Nomadic communities, 54, 58, 59 

Nordau, Max, 181, 246 

Nordics, 14 

Nose, shape of, 91-98, 120, 125 


O 


Odessa, Russia, 191 

Olivier, Sidney, 234, 235 

Orang, 70 

Origin of Species, 30, 31, 34, 35, 
45, 237 

Osterlen, statistician, 231 

Ottinger, Jakob, 195-199 

Ovaries, hens’, transplanted, 38, 
39 


EB 


Palestine, 108-113, 186, 184, 187, 
190, 191, 193, 194-207, 209-218 

Pajes (side-curls), 120, 121 

Paris we rance, biogses ¢ 

Pathology, a race criterion, 101- 
103 

Peasants, effects of city life on, 
131-133 

Persian lion, 32 

Petty bourgeoisie, 158-160 


INDEX 


Pharisees, 114 

Philippson, Professor, 195 

Physicians consulted by Jews, 
133, 134 

Physiology, 97 

Pickering, Charles, 64 

Pigeons, breeding of, 25 

Plasm, see Germ plasm, Body 
plasm 

Plattdeutsch, 107 

Pliocene period, 31 

Pogroms, 201 

Posen, Prussian province, 172 

Poland, 96, 139, 163, 164, 165, 
166, 172, 184, 200 

Poles, the, 86, 103, 173, 175 

Polynesia, 58 

Pomeranians, 121, 172 

Portugal, 148, 151 

Portuguese, the, 68, 175 

Posture, a race criterion, 97 

Poznanya, see Posen 

Prognathism, 70 

Proletariat, passim 

Propaganda, Jewish, 
117 

Proselytism, Jewish, 113-115 

Proteus sanguineus, 69 

Protonigritic group, 72, 73 

Prussia, 99, 153, 172 

Purity, racial, 60, 61, 90, 103, 
118, 127, 128, 220-224, 238 

Pygmies, 72 


113-115, 


Q 


Queens, borough of, number of 
Jews, 173, footnote 


R 


Rabbits, 25 
Rams, breeding of, 24 


254 


Ratzel, Friedrich, 56-58, 79, 80, 
232, 233 

Ravesteijn, W. v., 122 

Rechobosh, Jewish colony, 191 

Renaissance, 166, 228 

Rhinoceros, 32 

Richmond, borough of, number 
of Jews, 173, footnote 

Ridgeway, William, 41 

Ripley, anthropologist, 96 

Ritual murder, 108 

Rohlfs, Gerhart, 103 

Roman empire, 117 

Romance races, 86 

Rome, 184 

Rose, German anthropologist, 42 

Rothschild, Baron, 188 

Rubinow, I. M., 164, 169, foot- 
note 

Riidiger, Bishop of Speyer, 145, 
146 

Rumania, 96, 98 

Rumanians, 175, 184 

Ruppin, Artur, 171, 201 

Russia, 82, 86, 92, 96, 102, 103, 
152, 157, 158, 164, 165, 166, 169, 
172, 174, 175, 182, 188, 189, 
190, 228, 240, 241 

Russian Revolution of 1905, 180, 
181 

Russian Revolution of 1917, 180, 
214, 215, 241 

Ruthenians, 173, 175 


S 


Safed, Palestine, 200 

Saint-Hilaire, Isidore Geoffroy, 
35 

Saint Vincent, Bory, 64 

Saloniki, 164 

Saxon dialect of German, 105, 
106 


INDEX 


Scandinavians, 175, see also Den- 
mark 

Scheherban, Sultan, 61 

Schiller, Friedrich, 230, footnote 

Schmock, 105, footnote 

Schénlank, German journalist, 
124 

Schonthan, Franz von, 105, fooé- 
note 

Schénthan, Paul von, 105, foof- 
note 

Schwarzwald, the, 16 

Science, respect for, 138, 139 

Self-determination of nations, 
207, 208 

Self-preservation, 22 

Semites, passim 

Semitic race, passim 

Senegal lion, 32 

Serbs, 175 

Siegfried, Wagnerian hero, 105 

Singhalese, the, 69, 70, 71, 72 

Skin pigment, 40, 58, 65, 93 

Skull, shape of, 40, 42, 94-96 

Slavery, 84, 85 

Slavs, the, 12, 86, 183, 228 

Slovaks, 175 

Slovenes, 175 

Sociology, 19 

Sombart, Werner, 80, 81, 108, 121- 
123, 124, 141-143, 155, 161-163, 
192 

Spain, 148, 151 

Spaniards, 175 

Species, of animals, 23, 24 

Spencer, Herbert, 38 

Speyer, Germany, 145, 146 

Spiers, see Speyer 

Spinoza, Baruch, 245 

Spy, geographical name, 72 

Stade, historian, 110, 111 

Stags and does, 30 

Staten Island, see Richmond 

Striese, Direktor, 105, footnote 


255 


Struggle for existence, 26, 37 
Swabian dialect of Germany, 107 
Syphilis, 147, 226 

Syria, 112, 210, 212 


fh 


Tacitus, 75 

Talmudic learning, 139, 166 

Tasmanians, the, 246 

Teeth, deterioration of, 49, 78 

Tel Aviv, Palestine, 202, 204 

Telluric factors, 55 

Tertiary period, 31 

Teutonic Knights, order of, 60 

Teutonic race, 14-17, 75, 86, 126, 
133, 139 

Teutons, see Teutonic race 

Theilhaber, Felix, 99, 100 

Toala of Celebes, 71 

Trade, Jews in, see Commerce 

Trieksch, 164, 165 

Triesch, Davis, 197 

Trieste, Italy, 154, 155 

Tschulok, Dr. S., 88, 39 

Tsushima, battle of, 69 

Tuberculosis, see Diseases 

Turkey, 163, 164, 165, 187, 210 

Turks, the, 12, 211 

Tyrol, the, 74 


Ly 


Ulotriches, the, 76 

Unemployment, see Employment 

United States of America, 70, 
15, 16, 85, 154, 1738-175, 179, 
182, 183, 196 

Universities, Jewish professors 
in German, 161, 162 

Urban traits are Jewish traits, 
130 

Usury, 147 


INDEX 


V 


Vaccination, 102, 103 

Varana rhinoceros, 32 

Variation under domestication, 
25 

Varieties, of animals, 44, 46 

Veddas of Ceylon, 71 

Vienna, Austria, 172, 176, 205 

Vilna, Russia, 237 

Violations of women, 118 

Virchow, Rudolf, 222 

Virey, anthropologist, 64 

Vital statistics, 125, see also 
Mortality 

Vocational traits, 59, 126, 127 

Vorwdrts, Berlin daily, 124 


WwW 


Wagner, Richard, 104-106, 220 

Wandering Jew, the, 247 

War, behaviour of Jews in, 193, 
194 

Warsaw, Poland, 172 


Waterkant, Germany, 66 

Weismann, August, 37, 39 

Wheat, in Palestine, 196 

Wild animals, 25-43 

Wilderness, Sombart’s theory of 
the, see Sombart, Werner 

Wool, animals producing, 24 

Wiirttemberg, 107 


we 


Yemen (Arabia), 190, 237 

Yemenites, 189, 190 

Yiddish, 104-106, 108, 165, 169, 
footnote, 208, 210, 211, 241, 246 


Z 


Zangwill, Israel, 246 

Zion, 185 

Zionism, passim 

Zollschan, Ignaz, 146, 151, 152, 
154-156, 217-221, 226, 229, 236 

Zoology, 21 








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